We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carolyn Koch. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carolyn below.

Alright, Carolyn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I definitely came at the film composing route in a roundabout way. I’ve always been a musician, and have been classically trained on the piano since I was small. I knew I was always drawn to movie music and to writing music, but in my school-age years I didn’t yet have the sense of how you make the jump from the piano bench to scoring for the screen. It was also a highly male-dominated path (especially in Hollywood), and that was definitely something I realized as a kid.

Fast-forward to my 20’s. Academic and professional experience as a choral singer, in orchestral settings, developed my theoretical and practical skills. But I still wasn’t at the point of applying composition to media.

If there’s anything I could have told myself to get jump-started on from the get-go, it would have been music production. The absolute key was getting myself to a place where I was a self-sufficient producer and engineer of my own music, and fluent with today’s software for producing music. That way, I could get myself off the ground by being a one-woman team of producing and packaging my own compositions, for filmmakers and media anywhere in the world.

There was a lot of growth required in different disciplines, a lot of self-teaching, and building off the music education I already had. The next step for me would be coming back full-circle, and getting to work more with recording and conducting live musicians.

The other element is that, even if being a composer feels like being a ‘jack of all instruments’ at times, it helps to set aside time just for myself, to hone my skills on the piano, which is where this all started. Remembering that you never stop learning your craft, and you never stop learning from everyone around you, is essential.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an East Coast-based composer, orchestrator, and pianist.

I have a classically trained background in piano and music theory. I compose scores for film and other media. I work across genres, from ambient and experimental sounds, to orchestral-driven action scores. A passion of mine is working with indie filmmakers and supporting indie projects, especially women-driven projects.

I also create content on social media to support major audio companies, and to help educate fellow composers in the global community.

I’m a member of both the Alliance for Women Film Composers (AWFC) and the Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL).

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

For anyone just starting to build their social media presence, my advice is patience, patience, and more patience. It takes a gradual accumulation of solid content for your brand, and if you stay confident in your image, people will be drawn to it. Once you get a feel for the type of content that best represents you and that people are responding to, lean into that, and produce it consistently.

I would highly recommend connecting with relevant brands and like-minded networks. A great example for my case was the Alliance for Women Film Composers. These types of connections provide built-in communities that can support your content, promote growth, and even point you in the direction of opportunities you didn’t know existed.

Another element I swear by is that there are a million different ways to the top, and every single one of us has a different backstory that got us to where we are. The more you own and celebrate what sets you apart, the more people will remember you and your brand, and the stronger the niche you will carve for yourself.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

There were some mindsets I had to unlearn in the trajectory from musician to media composer. As with many other fields, there are integral aspects and instincts to being a musician that need to be translated or adapted when you are specifically working as a score composer for visual media. I had to learn when composing for film that it’s no longer just about your music. Sounds like it goes without saying, but it was a perspective I had to shake.

If you are a composer specifically writing a piece for choral performance, you can write it, create it, and lead it. But being a composer attached to a visual media project is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between you, at the post-production end, and every other creative and technician on the project. In that sense, I had to rein in a lot of my instincts as a writer: such as, the music being front and center, the music being responsible for telling the story all on its own, and my decisions defining exactly how the music works. I needed to shed some of that control, so that my music can help support the vision of the project. Sometimes what I’ve produced doesn’t work for the project. Sometimes it fits in a way that wasn’t what I’d thought. Sometimes it has to work differently to achieve the filmmaker’s goal. Gaining this perspective was an important step in my process.

There’s collaborative give-and-take in most fields. Even when you’ve developed your personal craft, be flexible in adapting your approach when it’s working in tandem with other people’s craft.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.carolynkochcomposer.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolyn_k_music/