We were lucky to catch up with Yi-Hsuan Liu recently and have shared our conversation below.
Yi-Hsuan, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
I grew up in a family of movie lovers. It never occurred to me that I would be interested in becoming a film composer. I studied hard for over a decade to be a violist following the Asian education system to reach the highest level of my profession. Pursuing perfection is what I learned from being a performer, it helped me to bear and deal with stress. However, what classical music also brought to me is how I learned to interpret music. It guided me to have a more sensitive taste of music and speak my own voice through performing.
After enrolling into Shih Chien University, I noticed that I felt incomplete to the idea of being a
performer. I pushed myself to explore more possibilities of what music can mean to me. I played in live concerts, recording sessions, and tried to participate in sound engineering, music business and jazz improvisation classes.
One day, due to a sound engineering assignment, I went to the movie theater. At a particular scene with source music, I found that the music in the score was so touching to me. It brought me into the scene, and as an audience I also could feel the character’s from the story. In that moment, I felt the power of music, helping the story to deliver the emotion to the audience. And I found that this is the art I wanna pursue in my work.
I enrolled in Berklee College of Music in 2016 dual majoring in film scoring and jazz composition. After graduating, I did an internship at Los Angeles with music editor Nick South and during that time I had the opportunity to work as a music editor in the film Sound of Freedom. Due to the pandemic, I moved back to Taiwan and met one of the most prestigious female composers in Taiwanese industry, Sing Wu and started to work with her as a music editor and composer for many TV series and dramas such as HBO Asia “Trinity of Shadows.”, Psychologist and The Summer Temple Fair TV series.
These opportunities opened new perspectives for me and in 2022 I got the opportunity to score the feature film “Chaotic Justice” which was released in 2022 across Taiwanese movie theaters and earned many awards such as Best Action Film at the Oniros Film Festival and Golden Lemur International Film Festival. My score for this film was also awarded Best Original Score at the Fox International Film Festival. All of these accomplishments re-ignited in me the passion to work with music for media and served as a confirmation that I was on the right path.
Recently I was also appointed as music consultant at Gamania, one of the most important video game studios in Taiwan and I am responsible for all the music and games in the company’s project. That also served as a catalyst for my career as it gave me the opportunity to be involved in the business side of the career.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
The first thing I would like to talk about is my video game company job. I have the privilege to work in Gamania, the biggest video game company in Taiwan as music supervisor. In this position I have the role of supervising all music and sound related materials in the games that are in development by the company. I am responsible for creating the guidelines, elaborate with the team the music style and concept for each different game, coordinate the production schedule, hire composers and sound designers, overview contracts, licensing and work together with programers on the implementation of the music and sound to the game engine.
The most interesting part of this position is that I have to cooperate and communicate with professionals of different areas of expertise. I love to understand their creative ideas, interpret it and build the sound concepts based on their input. Recently, we have released a game called “Chibi Maruko Chan” based on the famous Japanese animation character of the same name, and the process was very insightful, dealing with external IP and developing a game and sound concept based on the animation style.
After I moved back to Taiwan, I also worked with a renowned Taiwanese female composer called Sing Wu. The first project I worked with her was as music editor for a TV show called “Trinity of Shadows” that was going to be released through HBO Asia. In music editing, there are many challenges such as making sure the dialogue and music work together without each burying the other in the mix as well as conforming the music when there are new picture edit versions that are changed at the last minute. I have a big passion for doing music editing, dealing with spotting the music to the picture and developing a sound palette for it. On the other hand, it is a highly teaching based job where you need to be skilled enough with DAW and audio editing. I am glad to have had Nick South as my mentor during my first time in Los Angeles, it was from him while doing the acclaimed film Sounds of Freedom that I perfected my skills and felt so confident to work on an HBO project.
All those experiences gave me the opportunity to connect with like-minded professionals in Taiwanese industry and in 2021 I scored the feature film ” Chaotic Justice” which was released in 2022 in Taiwanese movie theaters. In this project, I built my own music team, cooperated with great professionals that were actually my friends from my school time to help me to deliver the music for the film with the highest quality. My video game background helped me to more easily communicate with the director about music style and ideas, and we found the best style of music for this film. The music editor background helped me to spot the scene precisely and also make music more functional to the scene. The total length of the movie is around 72 minutes and we have composed 62 minutes of music for it during 2 months of production time. I was glad that the music of this film was well received and earned awards such as Best Original Score at the Fox International Film Festival.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
One of the biggest challenges working in the film or TV industry is that you need to work under a high pressure while delivering premium-quality results. My classical training to be a viola performer over a decade in my childhood prepared me to face the high pressure and stress but also pursue perfectionism based on the rigorous discipline. This endurance now helps me deal with the short deadlines common to film or TV work. I can handle high stress gigs and be productive. More than that, the precision training in viola performance taught me how to focus on the details in any work I do, which is a habit required of any entertainment industry professional.
The second quality that made me able to get into Taiwan’s film industry are my production skills. I was fortunate to study at the prestigious Berklee College of Music with a scholarship that majoring in film scoring. Studying at one of the best music schools in the world gave me the necessary training to be able to handle musical production at an industry standard level. There, I learned not only how to write music but also how to produce, program virtual instruments, arrange, edit, mix and master. I also learned how to unite music with film using industry software and DAW, as well as was trained to prepare files for recording sessions, edit and how to prepare scores for those sessions. With that foundation, I kept developing and sharpening my skills ever since. Nowadays, most composers are required to know a lot of technical skills, not only to be able to present and deliver their own work to media productions, but also to be able to collaborate with other composers either doing additional music or as an assistant.
The third quality that I consider important for my career is that I never stopped listening to different genres of music. As a film and video game composer, it is very important to be familiar with many types of music and sounds because you will need to be able to score different genres of music. The fastest way to learn it is by imitating and absorbing other artists’ music into your brain and later transforming it using your own voice. Having one type of music style you are good at is a good thing at a beginner level, but when I started to have more scoring gigs, I was often required to create different types of music, often blending elements of distinct genres such as orchestral, electronic, heavy metal and ethnic chinese instruments, in one same soundtrack. Those blends are now the norm for cinematic music writing. Now that I have a larger repertoire that I can showcase different genres in my portfolio, my next clients are able to see that I am capable of being versatile and creating unique music for their productions.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
When working on intense projects the first thing I do is to create a detailed job schedule that can show me how much work I can do each day. The second thing I do is keep a precise daily routine. These two strategies helped me to avoid overwhelming situations and alleviate a bit of the pressure. A routine helps me to keep my energy constant so I can work efficiently. Also while I create a working schedule in the beginning of the project, I always allow myself some buffer time so I can easily accommodate changes or have strategic breaks, which are also very important.
The other thing I do is evaluate how much work I have to deal with in the beginning of the project and also consider the budget. When I realize the job is too much for myself to handle, I will make a music team. I like to work with people I trust and they always helped me to elevate the work into the next level and helped me to manage tight deadlines.
If I ever find myself stuck or overwhelmed, I will immediately stop working. I found out that work done under those circumstances always results in stuff that I think could have been better. In those situations, I walk away from my station and try to have some time off. If I am really in a rush, I will contact another composer who I trust and ask help from them. The best way to solve the problems is always asking for people to help. This also develops your collaborative skills working with other people and also allows you to have more space to focus on creativity.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://play.reelcrafter.com/bcomusic/yhl
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yihsuanliu_music/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nemo.liu/
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/yihsuanliu
- Other: https://uscscoring.com/students/2024/yi-hsuan-liu
