About Peiran Zhao
Peiran Zhao is a multimedia composer born and raised in Shanghai, China. She started to learn the violin at 4 when she showed great interest in music. Later on, she was thinking of not only restricting herself from playing classical pieces, so she decided to make her music, and applied for Berklee College of Music. She got her world tour scholarship during the audition and has just graduated in August 2022, with her Bachelor of Music in Contemporary Writing & Production and Film Scoring.
One year later, Peiran went to the Master of Arts in Sound Arts and Industries program at Northwestern University, where she started to explore more possibilities for herself. By taking courses in alignment with sound design and production, Peiran has been able to widen her scope and experiences when carrying out projects and collaborations in different sound domains.
📍Louis Hall Sound Stage
Master of Arts in Sound Arts and Industries
During this year, Peiran has been working on a recording project with an all-analog signal flow, in which she explored the external pre-amps and EQs on the SSL board.
In addition, she reproduced one of her original songs, in which she not only served as a producer, and contractor but also as a recording engineer.
As Peiran also took a class emphasizing Museum Sound Design in Winter, she stepped out of her comfort zone and combined her musicality and technical aspects together to create pleasant auditory experiences for museums.
Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring and Contemporary Writing & Production
During her life at Berklee, Peiran had a lot of experience writing for films (100 Mile Dash, Bourne, Gravity, How To Train Your Dragon, Ana's Playground, etc), advertisements (BMW, Uniqlo, JBL, etc) as well as main titles (Moon Knight, Six Feet Under, etc).
She then got a sense of the workflow in the film & TV industry, as she went over these projects from zero to finish, which required her to be a composer, copyist, and producer during the whole process. All these experiences enhanced her thoughts of being a multimedia composer.
While pursuing her degree in CWP*, she got the chance to compose, arrange, and produce pop songs, EDM, jazz, etc. Her well-educated industrial behavior equipped her with the capability to create music backstage.
Apart from all these, she engaged in many recording sessions as a violin player, ranging from films (Tooth Fairy, Hanna, Ocean Maker, The Little Match Girl, etc) to pop songs. Being a session player brings her a different mindset regarding the workflow, as she used to create content, being a session player is about making composers'/ producers' ideas come true.