Music has been an important part of Sophie Edwards’ life for as long as she can remember. Singing from a young age, she performed often throughout childhood, encouraged by her parents. However, it wasn’t until high school that the musician/producer discovered that a passion for music could be a career.

“I was studying maths and music at the same time and my school careers counsellor was like, ‘Why are you studying so much maths when you know that music is going to be a job?’”

From that moment on, the student committed all her energy to music, enrolling in a pre-tertiary program at the ANU Open School of Music. She continued at ANU in the Bachelor of Performance, specialising in contemporary and jazz vocals. After the pandemic, Ms Edwards jetted off to New York City last year to complete a master’s degree at the Berkley College of Music where she was the only Australian accepted.

Inspired by Avril Lavigne in her teens, Ms Edwards is now drawn to fierce women who are fully invested in their art form from start to finish – those who write, perform and produce it. This method takes more time, work and investment, but she says the end product is completely their own. While in America, she got to work with one of these women, Kimbra.

“I was doing a songwriting program for her, basically all of these girls got together, and we had to write a song for Kimbra. She was so cool in the way that she gave the time of day to everyone and every song that we wrote she turned it into her own thing,” says Ms Edwards.

Refining her skills through the program, Ms Edwards now not only writes music for herself and other singers, but also produces it. Recently, she released a track she recorded and produced while in NYC titled, 4K In My Brain.

“I had this concept of wanting to remember things clearly when you’re having a good time so that you can go back in a worse time and replay them in your brain,” she smiles.

Although she would most likely be classified as pop, Ms Edwards says genre is a tricky thing, for example, both Dua Lipa and Vance Joy are completely different but fall under the same umbrella. The musician says her music is authentic to her and influenced fully by the lyrics. Able to play guitar and piano, and with the help of software, Ms Edwards can entirely create her own tunes.

“A lot of the instruments program in, so it’s not real cello but I play the notes on the piano and then it turns into a cello, and then I affect it to sound better,” she explains.

The pandemic helped shift the tide in how modern music is made as people were creating tracks from their bedrooms using this hybrid of real and synthetic instruments.

“A really good example of this is Billie Eilish’s first album, she made that in her loungeroom with her brother Finneas. They made the whole thing themselves just with a little microphone and a laptop and it was one of the most successful albums of the whole year when it came out.”

Ms Edwards doesn’t predict that the method will replace the use of actual instruments, as those inclined to more rock sounds would prefer to create it as a band.

The software makes music recording more accessible and also allows for more creative control and a better experience, Ms Edwards believes. She says the songs she recorded with other producers in the studio left her feeling disconnected.

“When you’re just the artist and you’re working with a producer, you kind of sit and the producer sits and does their thing. You sing when they need you to sing, otherwise you kind of just sit there and watch.”

Realising that she could do a lot of the production, Ms Edwards taught herself the ropes and released a song which was her most successful at the time. Taking it as a sign that she was on the right path, she applied for the Berkley program to refine her production and recording skills.

Now she is back in Canberra, Ms Edwards is dividing her time between creating her own music and producing for other people, some here in Canberra and others from around the world.

“My dream is to one day have my own recording studio that prioritises women and gender non-conforming people because they’re super underrepresented in the music industry,” she says.

According to Ms Edwards, non-male producers are particularly unrepresented as only 2.8 per cent of music producers in the world identify as female.

“Which is kind of stupid because it’s not a gendered activity at all. Even when I first started at school, all the girls were singers and all the boys were on the computers and that’s how it worked.”

She says female and non-binary producers offer a different experience to that of males.

“We’re detail-orientated and we all want to be in the room a lot of the time but we’re just not invited so we work a lot harder.”

Keep up to date with Sophie Edwards via sophieedwardsmusic.com

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