We were lucky to catch up with Tricia Minty recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tricia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Music has always been a life passion of mine. I started playing the piano when I was about 5-6 years old. I grew-up with language delays and was a late talker, but music was an outlet for me to express myself. Although I couldn’t read, I was able to learn how to read music very easily and it was the first time that I felt good at something. This sparked a drive in me to push myself and pursue music. I started taking piano lesson with a new teacher when I was 12 years old and in time this teacher became a true mentor to me. She introduced composition, chord analysis, and music theory to me. As one of her first assignments, she had me do an arrangement of one of her original compositions “Dancing in A Minor” and she then performed it at local coffee shops and venues in Dana Point, CA. This again sparked a drive and opened a whole new world to me. I started buying stacks and stacks of CD’s from Best Buy and Tower Records and would look up the tabs online. I became obsessed with analyzing chord progressions and harmony structure. During my teenage years, I struggled with Major Depression and again music became an escape and therapeutic outlet for me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I went to college at California State University, Fresno for Music Composition. They offered a program called CSU Summer Arts and I took a writing music for media class over the summer. It was an intensive 10-15 hour a day course over the span of two weeks and I fell in love with the craft of writing music for film. From there I started scoring music and doing sound design for student films and after graduating with my Bachelor’s of Arts, I started collaborating with local filmmakers in Fresno,CA and surrounding central valley area. Typically, when most people think of Fresno, CA they think of agriculture and are sometimes surprised to hear that there is very much a thriving arts district and film community with amazing, very friendly, and incredibly talented individuals. Over the years, I’ve been able to make lifelong friendships and collaborate on dozens of projects all produced in Fresno and the surrounding central valley area. This past year, I scored music for two Central Valley based feature-length films including “Among The Willows” produced by Jefybal Productions (which I won for Best Score at the London Movie Awards) and also “Daisy” produced by M.S.R Studios both of which should be coming out later in 2024.

In 2019, I started scoring music and sound design for a theater and film production company, Force of Nature Productions. My first few projects with them were two short films, “No Problem” and “Batter-Up” and then I also collaborated with them on their Halloween theater show, Fallen Saints: Salem. Over the pandemic, I scored music for their Zoom Theater pieces and became their Resident Music Composer. I also met my husband, Michael Guthrie on their last Zoom-Theater Production, Music Rush which I was also a producer on. Music Rush was a unique project because I scored Six 5 minute music cues which the writers were randomly assigned (by lottery) to write a script to. In addition, I also helped record and produce four original songs. My husband was one of the song-writers, musicians, and actors on the project and we spent a lot of time collaborating. Our theater director, Sebastian Munoz married us earlier this year in June, 2023 and we got to celebrate with all of our theater and film friends.
Since the start, I’ve collaborated on at least 18 projects with Force of Nature Productions including live theater, film, and performing/playing the concertina at horror conventions. This year in 2023, I scored the music and sound design for Fallen Saints: Arcanum which I was nominated for Best Sound Design with 2023 Broadway World Los Angeles Awards.

I’ve also been getting more experience in acting and performing with Force of Nature Productions this past year in 2023. I’ve performed as different characters at a few horror conventions including Midsummer Scream in Long Beach and Season’s Screamings in Pasadena including as a cannibal and an undead Victorian lady. For Fallen Saints: Arcanum, I performed as a SCP Universe character, a Broken Doll and played creepy nursery rhymes on my concertina for patrons at Midsummer Scream and I also performed as a Broken Doll for the main run of the show at the Brickhouse Theater in North Hollywood. Fallen Saints: Arcanum was an immersive theater haunted walk-through show based off of the SCP Universe (which is a fictional paranormal universe created by a collaborative-writing wiki). I also recently made my stage theater debut as an actress in Rush Around the World: A Holiday Adventure where I performed as an Ukrainian tourist in Brazil for New Years.

For film productions, I was also casted as the leading actress in my first feature-length film “One-Way Ticket to Tinseltown” written and directed by Share Cherrie. We started filming in August, 2023 and will be finishing filming in early 2024. I’m also slated to score the music for the film which I am very excited about. The film has an old Golden Age Hollywood vibe to it mixed with occult. In addition, I also played an “evil spirit” and scored the music for a short film called “Browsing for Terror ” written and directed by Sean Dunlap which will be making it’s rounds in the film festival circuit this year.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Given my challenges very early on in life with learning how to talk, read, and write, I want to show how some individuals like me can thrive and discover talents in music and art. In the early nineties, the diagnostic criteria of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) was still not yet fully understood in the school settings especially with “higher functioning” girls. I had to learn things like social skills the old fashioned way through the “School of Hard Knocks” which led to a lot of issues with self-confidence, depression, and anxiety. Fortunately today, the diagnostic process and public awareness of ASD has greatly improved in the schools. I also know this because I also work as a Speech-Language Pathologist in the public school system. There is also a lot of great ongoing research that is showing how music can help stimulate neural pathways for language development and the therapeutic possibilities for that are endless.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is getting to collaborate with other artists. Over the years, the art of collaboration has taught me a lot about myself and has forced me to learn how to become a better communicator. There is also something very Beautiful about creating and combining art with another person’s art. The best ideas always come out of collaboration. I love the feeling of inspiration after watching a newly edited project or after reading a new theater script and how their art then creates ideas for music scoring. The combination of both visual and auditory art is transcendental for me.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: PirateQueenMinty
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tricia.minty
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/tricia-minty
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3U6fiyYZu7ZrUjfREg0wqb?si=M-3_7oT5SzmAbi483JHzzw
• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4353455/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Image Credits
Sean Dunlap, Patricia Maureen Photography, Brett Nelson Ambient Art Photography, and Carlos R. Hernandez Photography.