We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jiahui Yu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jiahui below.
Jiahui, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
Yes, I tried to earn a full-time living by my creative work for a while, but sometimes it’s still not enough to cover my daily expenses.
I’m a composer, and most of the time I write music for other people to earn an income. However, if there’s no long-term partners to cooperate, it will be really difficult to have a stable income. During the time I was trying to self-employment, I certainly didn’t have a “job” every day. Most commonly, there will be a period of being extremely busy, and then suddenly having nothing to do.
If you are facing the same situation, then my advice would be – to join a company or studio so that you can get a steady salary. Base on that, you can use your spare time to do some work related to creation, which can not only meet our creative needs, but also have a stable income. The only downside to this solution is that it may take you a long time to adjust to such a busy life. Of course, if you feel too tired, you still have to choose one of the two. Keeping a good health is the most important thing of our life.
Jiahui, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Amy Yu, film/video game composer and arranger. Graduated from Berklee College of Music, majoring in Film Scoring, and has served as arranger for many student concerts during her school years. Now she’s studying Media Scoring and Production at Frost School of Music, University of Miami, as a full scholarship teaching assistant. The short films she scored have been selected for many international film festivals, such as NATAS, CICFF, BAFF and AWFF. She has won the “Best Original Score” in Hollywood Shorts Fest in 2023, and won the “Best Soundtrack” in Montelupo Fiorentino Film Festival in 2022.
Amy Yu is a Chinese composer with a 5-year composing/arranging background. Began to learn classical piano at the 5 and has won lots of gold medals in piano competitions. Amy has done a lot of music composing and sound design in the graduation works of students in the professional fields among film and television editing, game design and art creation. In addition, she has many original songs and orchestral music works. Proficient in various sound and music editing and notation software such as Sibelius, Protools, Cubase and Logic Pro x. Familiarity with a range of musical genres, with special experience in writing orchestras.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
In the 21st century, most people’s basic needs can be met. More people begins to pursue the spiritual level of freedom and abundance, which precisely reflects the necessity of the existence of contemporary artists. As a working artist, my ultimate goal is to be able to create real value for human beings, both now and in the future. In my opinion, as long as the people who create art with a good attitude, they are all priceless artists. If his work creates real value for people, such as saving a depressed person who has fallen to the bottom of the rock, then I think the artist has truly made the world a better place.
My other goal is the combination of music. I have been receiving traditional Chinese music education and Chinese culture before I prepare to study in the United States. In many cases, the idea of creating Chinese music is different from Western music. I hope to combine more Chinese and Western music and explore more possibilities. The other day, I just listened to an album by a Chinese musician whose orchestration used Chinese instruments, but was written in the style of Western orchestration. He also put some western instruments in it. It has to be said that this is very rare in the market. So when I heard that, I was very moved and shocked. This not only promoted the progress of Chinese music, but also gave full play to the integration of world music. Such innovative music deserves to be heard by more people, because it represents not only music, but an open and diversified vision, which can better promote the integration of ethnic groups.
There is definitely a long way to go to achieve my goals, but I hope my artistic value begins with creating joy and happiness for those around me. When I was in high school, I wrote an award show song for the school’s award ceremony, and it was played for four years. It’s the first piece I’ve actually created since I started learning computer music. At that time, I really felt the happiness that people get from my music. When listening to the music created by the alumni for the school, people’s heart is filled with excitement and pride. I have always been very grateful to the school for giving me this opportunity to create value for the school. Since then, I have really established my determination to become a contemporary artist. It has also become my goal to bring happiness and joy to people.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I started building my Chinese Tik Tok acount from 2019. At that time, Chinese Tik Tok has only been on the rise for a few years. So I decided to post my Berklee College of Music offer and use a unique photographic approach to better present it. At the same time, I also put in a one-time cost of about 15$ for attract traffic. Fortunately, within a short time of posting this in Tiktok, I had attracted over 50,000 followers and the video got over half a million likes. You know, at that time, there were not so many users of Tiktok, and these numbers was extremely shocking to me. Since then, I have tried to post some music creation and singing related videos on Tik Tok, which quickly attracted many like-minded peers.
I also run Bilibili, Xiaohongshu(Little Red Book), but these social medias are gonna take a little longer to attract fans. These different platforms will have different audiences of fans, so they will be built in different ways. But I believe that social media will certainly be a great help in promoting our creative work. My ultimate advice is, make sure you keep posting things on your social media!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://amyyumusic.com
- Instagram: amyyujh
