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

Hi Tiffany, thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I didn’t decide to pursue music composition as a professional career until I was in my late 20’s. Although I have been exposed to artistic fields since childhood, learning piano, drawing, and so forth, they were mostly hobbies. In China back then, people thought mainstream jobs like lawyers, doctors, and bankers are more stable and lucrative. That’s true, but none of those career paths ignited my passion. I played guitar and keyboard in rock bands during high school and college, and dreamed about maybe becoming a professional musician, but I knew that would be impractical without guidance and resources. None of my family members is in the art field; only one of my remote relatives was a lifelong Erhu player, but was also down-and-out through his life. So I ended up working at a bank after graduating from college, where I majored in English Literature and minored in Finance.

Three years flew by. I seemingly earned enough to maintain a decent lifestyle, but I never felt happy or satisfied. The repetitive and routinized work wore me out quickly. I couldn’t find my value there. I could see how my life would be ten years down the road and that’s not what I wanted. I was pondering, there must be something outside my small circle, something that I enjoy doing without worrying about people’s judgment. So I left the bank and came to LA to seek other opportunities. Still not knowing what exactly to do, first I went to UCLA Extension to study economics and international trades. Then one day during a class break, I came across this brochure outlining the school’s various programs. When I saw the details of the Film Scoring program, my eyes sparked —this is exactly what I wanted to be doing!

Once decided, I quickly made the switch. I started to study film scoring at UCLA Extension, and picked up my long-forgotten piano and guitar skills. I totally immersed myself in learning music composition for three years, then later on I was accepted into the Master’s program in Music Composition for the Screen at Columbia College Chicago (CCC). There, I got to systematically study the nuts and bolts of film scoring and music production technology with professors Kubilay Uner, Kazimir Boyle, and Daniel Dehaan; I also had the opportunity to study with Composers-in-Residence Miriam Cutler, Vivek Maddala, and Brandon Campbell. Upon graduation, I moved back to LA and had the incredible opportunity to intern with award-winning composer Nathan Wang. At this point, my wheel of fortune slowly began to turn. I got to work on projects encompassing various styles and my film scoring skills improved a lot in this process. I’m still learning and practicing every day, trying to survive in this unpredictable industry in this dazzling city. It’s not any easier than my previous banking job, but as long as I’m doing what I enjoy, I’m happy.

Looking back, there wasn’t a specific moment I first “knew” I would do this. I always “knew”, I just found a way in one day. It’s all about making a choice and sticking to it.

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 started learning piano at the age of four, but it was not until my late 20’s that I decided to pursue music as my career. I had been doing totally different jobs before that point, including working in the bank, trading company, etc., and made several pivots into this industry.

As media composers, our job is combing music into visuals to tell stories. We have to capture the characters’ various emotions through the language of music. It’s a subtle but indispensable task. I think my working experience in various fields and international background equip me with the sensibility to resonate with various characters, and express their inner worlds using different music tools.

I specialize in writing orchestral pieces with memorable melody lines, with a blend of electronic texture and sometimes ethnic instruments, but it varies from project to project. I’m grateful I had the chance to explore various genres, which makes my style eclectic. In high school when I was in the school rock band, I was exposed to mostly rock and punk music. I would trace back to that experience when I’m asked to write a rock song. Then later when I started doing film scoring, orchestration became my main voice, and that is still the case today.

While pursuing my Master’s in Music Composition at CCC, I collaborated with a student director and wrote music for the short film Chasing Reality, which premiered on the Manifest Film Festival in 2022. This fantasy film told the story of a girl with anxiety who was pulled into her own painting and encountered her other self in a parallel universe. While interning with Nathan Wang in LA, I wrote additional music for the web series Chinatown Detective 2; and later on, I participated in arranging and orchestrating Jackie Chan’s upcoming movie, A Legend. I also co-composed the music for the short Kung Fu skit feautured on the 2024 Chinese National Spring Gala. Aside from media music, I also worked on songs. “Join Hands”, the theme song of the first Golden Panda Film Festival held in Chengdu, China, was sung by prestigious singers Wei Wei and Dimash Qudaibergen; “Dream of Shanghai” and “Unwilling to Fail”, two pop songs where I made the vocals with AI synthetic voices for a musical, will premier in Shanghai this year.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I had known about film scoring way earlier in my life, so that I wouldn’t have had to stumble my way in. I’ve been keen on watching films and listening to music since I was very young, and I’ve been always curious about how those beautiful soundtracks in films are made, but at that time, I didn’t know film scoring existed as a career. On the other hand, I’ve also been fortunate enough to try different things before finding my true path. My past experience enriches my musical voice as a film composer today, and gives me much resilience to face the challenges in this career.

I’m fascinated by the vast resources I can access here in Los Angeles. There are tons of workshops, forums and music events you can attend. Beyond that, there is a robust community consisting of composers from all over the world. All of those are quite limited in my hometown. Thanks to the resources I was able to access after I came to the US, and the mentors I encountered along the way, I managed to make it this far in this creative journey.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

This question is related to the first one. In my hometown, most people still believe that only stable mainstream jobs can lead to happiness and success. Music and other arts are considered hobbies than professional pursuits. At the same time, the music industry itself has seen tremendous changes over the years: from traditional orchestration to synthesizers, from plucking out notes on a piano to AI composition programs, music is no longer a solitary industry, but requires more interdisciplinary collaborations, and that actually leads to more job possibilities.

Therefore, my goals are two-fold. My personal goal is to score more movies and other projects, to keep thriving as a film composer, and take my career to the next level. Over the longer term, I hope to support and bring more awareness to art education in my hometown and other corners of the world, to convince people there are more opportunities than they think for music and other artistic pursuits, so that they have more freedom to choose their own career paths.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.tanyufan.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tyftiffany/
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/tanyufan