Interview transcription of Yuxi Zhang interviewed by Baajah Mohammed about her musical rescoring of the animated short film Piper (2016)

So Yuxi, how old are you?

23

Where are you from?

China

Where do you currently live?

Both America and China

Could you explain your musical background?

I learned accordion with my mom when I was four years old and when I was seven years old I changed to learn piano with a professional professor in my hometown city. I keep on learning piano and singing until now so I have learned music about 20 years. My undergraduate school is Communication University of China, which locates in Beijing, the capital of China. After that , I fly to America, Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, Peabody Institute to keep on studying my master degree, Computer Music major.

What I would like to compose during my high school’s life and undergraduate’s life is campus songs. In addition, an original song named My Yesterday was performed on my university’s stage and it was awarded the top ten original pop songs in national campus song competition. What I do now is film scoring and also music songs. Besides, I also explore more electronic music since I came to America.

Do you play any instruments?

Piano, guitar, accordion, jazz drum.

How would you describe your compositional style?

My songs style is pop. However, my film music style is focus more on orchestra music with a little electronic sound design inside it.

Do you have musical influences?

Hahahaha, influence?  I don’t think so. Just in my country, there a some young students love my original song.

How did people feel about the piece whenever you presented it to them?

They think it is lovely and the frames or orchestrations of my piece is lovely and suits the plot. However, some of them also highly recommend me to add some sound effect when the river comes or piper jumping up.

What was your composition process?

I write chords firstly and I find a small motive with some notes and then I develop them to the full orchestra. Changing beats and transpose sometimes is very useful for me to continue to compose some new elements.

When did you compose Piper (re-score)?

In October of 2018

Were there any other things that you thought of when choosing a title for this piece? If so, why?

No, I just used the same name Piper because it is a film rescore, I didn’t want to confuse the listeners or infringe on the rights of the composers of the original score or the writers of the film.

What drew you to this specific short film?

I like Disney, everything is amazing for me when I was a very young child. Therefore, I would like to compose some music use disney lovely style. In addition, this was awarded short film, is the latest for people to appreciate and also the plot appeals me a lot when I first seen this.

Are there specific motifs used by the Disney original?

The Original specific motifs just starts with the music with a very quiet orchestration skills and some scattered notes to display a piper’s psychology changing movement and the guitar elements is a very leisurely and a lovely motif to transfer to the music movement which displays the piper becomes more powerful to find its own food.

Did you use those motifs?

I did not use guitar instruments and sound effects in this rescore. What I use is that the classical music instruments orchestration. I made the harmony and the classical orchestration sounds more coherent and use woodwind instruments, brass instruments, strings and percussion to make the score more like a narrative, which follows the plot rhythm and try to use music to display this story. The differences are that the original score is a brief orchestration with some sound effect together but my piece is just focus more on classical orchestration.

Have you written any other music for films?

Yes. I have wrote many film scores such like some suspense drama, romantic films, gun battle plots or some animation soundtracks.

Why did you choose to compose a score for animated cinema?

Animation movies is a little from film. Animation movie sometimes needs to change the beat all the time, which means there is not a certain beat. In addition, animation film music could give me some challenge when I combine the different emotion changes in music and connect it into a whole piece.

What is your favorite type of cinema to compose for and why?

Romantic Films and Suspense Drama. I like something could make people have strong emotional, I would like to use strings instruments to write some melody which could build a happiness or sad environment. Therefore, Romantic Films is a very good choice. In addition, Suspense Drama has many inharmonic chords which is very interesting for me when do compose.

Has your culture and where you are from influenced your compositional style?

I don’t think so. Due to the advanced Internet access, I could enjoy many good study sources from other countries. I also is a big fun of American Films, American singers or American culture. Therefore, I think there is not too much culture differences for me when composing. I also like jazz music very much, which is a crucial culture of America.

What programs do you use? Software?

I use Logic Pro X and Cubase 9.5 softwares to compose music.

Why computer music as opposed to traditional composition?

Traditional composition maybe focus more on music in a certain style and classical music. Classical music has their own harmony and traditional instruments orchestration. Doing film music could use digital audio workstation to compose music and add more sound design or make some detailed on virtual instrument skills effectively, which improved my working efficiency.

Do you have a favorite film composer?

John Williams and Danny Elfman

Is your work inspired by them?

Exactly, their music influenced me a lot.