By Joe Vickrey
From being scouted for the show K-POP STAR to working on the audio for a Student Academy Award-winning animated short, Michelle Cheuk has covered a lot of ground in a very short time.
Currently a student in BYU’s Commercial Music Program, Michelle spoke with me about her winding journey across the music industry. Michelle’s grandmother was a single mother of six children in Korea, and her children had limited opportunities to explore extracurricular activities. Michelle’s mother always wished she had chosen to study music, but her children seized the opportunity their mother never had. Michelle began studying piano, voice, and the flute from a very young age. Visiting Korea in the summers she even began to learn some traditional Korean instruments like the Gayageum (harp) and danso (flute).
By the time she was in high school she became a full-fledged bedroom producer. “I’ve always been writing songs since I was little.” Michelle added that formal practice was considered a chore in her home, but she was more interested in songwriting. “I practiced so I could produce.” With a single USB mic connected to her laptop she began to hone her craft as an engineer.
She was also lucky enough to have gotten the opportunity to attend a Berklee School of Music summer program as a teenager. “That’s when I was introduced to jazz and Motown and all the crazy stuff.” With a laugh, Michelle continued, “I was like, whoa… I’ve been living under a rock!” It was while on this trip she applied for the Korean TV series K-POP STAR on a whim.
Reminiscing on the process, Michelle said, “It looked kind of sketchy, and I didn’t even follow the rules for the application … I just submitted a song I produced, and they got back to me.” Even without a formal audition, she was accepted, and they flew her out to Korea for the filming.
Unfortunately, the experience wasn’t the magic event she had hoped for. “A lot of Korean television is very scripted,” Michelle explained. Initially unaware to her, the show pushed her through auditions to fill the narrative of the Korean-American singer role they were hoping to create. Even when expressing her disappointment in the process, it was clear she still sees the glass half-full. “It was a really interesting process, but it was a good learning experience.”
She had performed a cover of Studio Ghibli’s version of “Country Roads” which had gained some attention online. The team behind Amazon’s show James May: Our Man in Japan reached out to her with the message that they wanted to use her cover in the show. “And so I got a TV gig, but I didn’t want to get ripped off. I thought, I need to talk to someone who actually knows about this stuff. Because my friend was in commercial music, I heard about Ron Saltmarsh, and then I scheduled a time to meet with him.”
Saltmarsh, one of BYU’s Commercial Music Professors, recently told Michelle that he was so impressed with her in their initial meeting that he said afterwards, “We’ve got to get her into our program!” Up until she applied for BYU, Michelle hadn’t discovered that there were non-performance music degrees.
“[Performance] was my whole world, but then I learned about recording and commercial music programs, I wanted to study that.” She began her time at BYU as what she described as still being very song-oriented. After being accepted into the program, Michelle wanted to try her hand in sound design. She auditioned for the program’s annual collaboration with their animation department. The panel thought her audition design was hilarious, and she got chosen for the sound design team to work on the BYU’s Student Academy Award-winning animated short, “Student Accomplice.”
After being selected for the sound design, Michelle started to think, “Maybe I have a vibe for this.” She began to receive opportunities to attend Game Developer’s Conference and Sound Design Derby where she fell in love with sound designing. At Sound Design Derby she got to watch live demos, and after watching one person get hired by Netflix on the spot, she inwardly resolved to hone her skills. “I want to be like that. I want to be that good. I started wanting to practice, and it helped a lot in my preparation for the animation as well. I started practicing sound design and other things before I even touched animation. It was a really great learning experience.”
I couldn’t help but ask if sound design had changed how she experienced the world. Immediately she nodded in agreement. “It ruined my brain, but I enjoy it. I’m kind of a crazy person for audio.” We both laughed as she shared how the wind on the beach during one of her trips was so different depending on the direction that she had to stop and process it. Now a year into sound design, Michelle has just received funding for her first role as a director for a short film she wrote.
Michelle has essentially been speedrunning every possible angle of the music industry with grace and success. From film to songwriting, producing, designing, nothing seems to be an obstacle in her path. With her wealth of experience, I asked if she had any advice for anyone looking to work in the music industry and her response was something she learned from multiple professors she had — “You don’t have to wait until you feel like you’re good enough to do something. You can qualify yourself by learning on the job. Sometimes that’s what you have to do to really learn how to do it, and that’s how you get good at it.”
She ended her advice with a positive affirmation that felt like a great summation of her character: “You have to be confident in yourself!”
Speaking with Michelle Cheuk about her adventures was an absolute blast, and her eagerness for everything she’s working on was contagious.
Be sure to follow Michelle on Instagram and check out “Broken” from her project Leeseul below!