A Rewarding Career in Music

I was forced to practice the piano for an hour a day by my mother, something I hated doing as I did not like playing the music that was given by my music school then.  My grandmother would check on me whilst my mother was at work and being the cheeky 6 year old that I was, I would play my own compositions, little beknowst to grandma! This was when I first discovered my love for composing music.

I was the school’s pianist in primary school and had my first public performance playing my own composition when I was 11 years old. So you can say I’ve been on stage since a young age.  I picked up the violin later on when I was 17.

My music education started in Penang where I learned basic music arrangement and programming. When I turned 18, I decided to take my music education further by enrolling into ICOM.  At ICOM, I was exposed to a lot of performance and production techniques and skills, learned different musical genres and met many wonderful friends. My favourite memories at ICOM include the weekly Friday performances, the Celebration Series events where we got to meet some of the artists whom we paid tribute to like Sheila Majid, Alleycats and Zainal Abidin. I will also never forget the late nights before project submissions, where all students would work together to help record their individual projects. There was great team spirit amongst everyone.

Outside of college, I started performing at functions with friends, including fellow ICOM student, Noryn Aziz, collaborated with lecturer Sharon Paul for a song for Farah from Akademi Fantasia and also had one of my songs picked for Dina from Malaysian Idol’s album. By my final year in ICOM, I was backing up local artists such as Mawi, Anwar Zain, Amy from Search, Zainal Abidin and Akademi Fantasia finalists.

My parents were very supportive of my decision to pursue music as a career, something which I had decided upon from as young as the age of 15! My first job was scoring music for a children’s show called ‘Planet Bizzaro, The World According to Zoomer’ which aired on local TV. After completing that, I was offered to write and produce the syllabus for a children’s music school, Anne Musikscule, which specialises in music and movement classes.  I have just recently completed writing 2 violin elementary books for the school and also teach violin and piano there. I also perform actively and play violin for singer songwriters, Nick Davis and Bo and also have my own acoustic trio, called the Three O’s. So I am very lucky to be able to strike a balance between teaching, producing and performing!

 I plan to pursue a film -scoring course in Los Angeles at either USC or UCLA and have been working on my applications to both universities and also exploring scholarship options. Music is a never ending learning journey with endless possibilities and I feel blessed that I have been given all the support and opportunities to live my dream.

Savy Ho,
ICOM Alumni
Composer, performer, producer and arranger.