Meet Yi-Hsuan LIU | Film Composer/ Music Editor/ Video Game Composer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Yi-Hsuan LIU and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Yi-Hsuan, can you share a quote or affirmation with us?
The album “Zero Landmine” , composed by Sakamoto Ryuichi, represents how I experienced and transformed the music in my life. Music is sound, it has the ability to be as a language we can speak
through, but it can also just be beautiful sounds.

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
point in 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 was fortunate to have the experience of living in Japan and studying at Tokyo College of Music
for one year. The experience of learning Japanese gave me a new way to rethink music. It showed me how
we can use a different language to express ourselves and how we can use the music as a language to
deliver the emotion. Since I enrolled at Berklee College of Music, I fell in love with the sound of jazz and
learned how to create emotion through composition.

The concept of “music as sound” popped up in my life when I worked in Alibaba Group as a
sound designer in China. I was studying with my colleagues at that time and shared ideas about what
sound effects are, and what is the difference between them and music. When I got the opportunity to have
an internship with Nick South, he trained me to become more detailed and sensitive to deal with sound,
and how to get the balance between music, sound effects and dialogue. What we could do more for the
film from the music part to make the sound of the film more accomplished. I started to notice music can
be sound, and sound can be music.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I believe that all the experiences mentioned above gave me gave me the foundations that allow me to navigate my career with confidence to take challenges. In September 2021, Taiwan was going through a critical period during the pandemic, with many business pausing or closing their activities. At that time, I was making a living by teaching violin while at the same time, trying to get opportunities to develop my composing career. In that moment, I received a message from a director asking me to compose the soundtrack for his debut feature film, and I had only two months to do so.

I took that project and it turned out to be one of the best collaborations I had so far. Not only I became friends with the director Hsin-che Cheng and the producer Wen-Ting Chiu, but I also got the opportunity to have a team that helped me to produce the score. That was a very special moments because it proved me that I could do a project of that scope, but also put me in the Taiwanese film industry, as the film was released in the Taiwanese theaters the following year. The film, entitled Chaotic Justice, also brought me a Best Original Score at the Fox International Film Festival, which gave me more confidence that I am in the right path.

I believe the most important thing as creatives working with other creatives is to know and respect their views, trying to understand and being always curios and eager to learn more with each other.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
That is a very interesting question! There are many places that I believe one should go in LA! I would definitely bring them to places such as the Santa Monica Pier, Topanga, the Hollywood Sign, Long Beach, the Grove and the Big Bear! There’s such a lot of things to see. Foodwise, I would definitely try Koreatown places!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I have a few people that had a fundamental role in my journey so far. I would like to mention the music editor Nick South, which was the first Hollywood professional who gave me an opportunity. I met him when I became an intern at his studio right after graduating from Berklee, back in 2019. Being mentored by Nick, I learned everything that is necessary to be a music editor in the film industry in Los Angeles. He was not only an amazing professional but he was also a mentor, that helped me to shape my professional atitude and how to navigate, manage and communicate in this industry. He believed in my work and, while still an intern, he gave me an opportunity to do some music editing in one of the films he was working at the time, Sound of Freedom, which became a commercial success recently,. I was lucky to have him so I am deeply grateful for his guidance.

This training with Nick led me to work with as a music editor with the Taiwanese composer SiNg Wu, who is also someone I would like to mention. I met her after going back to my home country Taiwan when the pandemic hit. With her, I had the opportunity a lot to learn about the Taiwanese industry and work on major projects doing music editing. She gave me the opportunity to also write additional music for the HBO Asia series Trinity of Shadows. I continue to collaborate with SiNg Wu in many projects.

To finish, I would like to mention Gamania, one of the biggest game companies in Asia, where I am currently the music supervisor. In there, I’ve learned in depth how the video-game industry works and I had the pleasure to work and collaborate with other professionals of different departments such as screenwriting, art, programming and more. I am deeply thankful for the opportunity they gave me.

Website: https://uscscoring.com/students/2024/yi-hsuan-liu

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yihsuanliu_music/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yihsuanliu9/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nemo.liu

Other: https://play.reelcrafter.com/bcomusic/yhl