 Sometimes the charm is, sorry for the very unantiklimactic start, but my name is Tina Quill, and I'm very, very happy to be here with you guys today. So I was asked to talk a little bit about my life, speak a little bit about my career, sorry my little out of breath, a little bit about my career as a cellist, and as a soundtrack recording artist, so I don't know if anybody recognized that piece, well probably in the back. So that was a main theme to the new Wonder Woman movie. It first appeared in Batman vs Superman, and the main melody, even though it kind of sounds like electric guitar, it was actually cello. It was actually the electric cello, so I was very lucky to have been able to work on that main theme with Hans Zimmer. So yeah, I'll just start from the very beginning. I have about, oh god, only 13 more minutes. Alright, better hurry up. I have about 13 minutes to tell you guys a little bit about my experiences and some of the lessons that I have learned. The year was 1985, and that was when I was made in China. Yay, like a lot of things, right? And so my parents, they are both classical musicians, and they're also extremely conservative, and yay, okay. They're extremely conservative. They have since then been unconservatized, if that is a term, by myself, but so this is basically what happened. So they grew up during the Communist Revolution in China, and they were both in the Army, like most people were, it was a requirement to be in the Army, or they would send you out to the farms to work as a farmer for a year, so they both chose to join the Army and actually play in the Army Orchestra, so that's how they met. And you know, when I think back, I was thinking earlier this morning, I'm like, what? I know that my parents are very conservative, and I think Asian culture in general is more on the conservative side, but what is it that made them so extremely conservative to the extreme? And I think just growing up in that kind of Communist mentality where everything, nothing should stand out, standing out is bad. You only want to do what is acceptable, what is known, and so being classical musicians, their dream for me, of course, was for me to join an orchestra, which is beautiful, because I love classical music and I still do play classical music, but growing up, so I was forced and coerced, let's just say forced, I won't go into detail. There might have been some locked doors involved in keys, but I was forced to practice for usually about eight to ten hours a day on top of going to normal school every day since I was seven years old, and to be completely honest with you, as a child, I was extremely unhappy, because I think, of course, I wanted to go out and play, go on field trips, none of which I was allowed to go on, and for me, my youth was really just a training ground of you have to practice, you have to be the best, you have to be a good classical musician, which I'm really, really grateful for now, because I think it built the foundation of the technique and muscle memory that is really, really important to have as a musician whatever genre of music it is that you're playing. So, yeah, I practiced for eight to ten hours a day, and also my parents did not allow myself and my little brother to listen to anything but classical music, much like in communist China, where most types of music were banned, were outlawed, so I think it just kind of carried on from there, and so they said, you can't listen to anything, it's the devil's music, it's bad, and I think the most dramatic experience that I had music-wise that really affected me a lot was when I was in seventh grade, so I was a really nerdy kid, very shy, I would have died already if I was in front of an audience like this, I was super, super shy, always had a book in front of my face when I was walking down the hall, so I wouldn't have to look at anyone in the face in case they looked at me, and there was this guy in seventh grade, his name was Luke, and I had a crush on him because he was very strange, it was a very conservative neighborhood in San Diego that we lived in, and there weren't that many goths or punks, but he was like the token school goth, and he wore black lipstick, he had like long black hair down his shoulders, but he also had these really thick coke bottle lens glasses, he was kind of like this, you know, they always slide down his nose, so he was kind of a nerd and a goth at the same time, which I thought was, oh my god, that's like awesome, right? So he was a nerd goth, and I would like kind of follow him around sometimes during lunch, and at that point in my life, I was, I really was attracted to things that were different, I think, because when you put confines on something or somebody, a lot of times, obviously the psychological reaction is that you want to do the opposite, so I wanted, I was attracted to things that were strange or dark and aggressive, so I'm like, oh, I want to be cool like Luke. So I found some black lipstick from the 99 cent store, my favorite store to this day, and so I would carry it in my backpack to school because, again, my parents would have murdered me if they had seen me with black lipstick, and then I found, this is my most prized piece of jewelry, if you call it that, I found like the back of a clip on earring, so if you've seen them, so not the actual earring, just the back, it must have fallen off some poor lady's earring, and then I found a tiny key ring, so not the full-sized ones, but the tiny little key rings, and I attached it to the earring, and then I clipped it to the middle of my nose like a septum ring, so I'm like, oh, this is going to make me look really alternative and cool. So that was that phase just to give you a little bit of background. And so one day Luke says to me, he said, hey, have you heard of Marilyn Manson? And I said, no, who is she? He's like, I'm gonna let you borrow my CD. I'm like, okay, so I ran home, it was the Antichrist Superstar CD from Marilyn Manson. Just the name of it, I'm like, oh, this is like this is really bad, you know, but I'm just gonna listen to it because I think he's kind of cool. So I had this boombox in my room, a really old boombox that we bought from the next door neighbor at their garage sale, and had a CD player and two like tape decks in the front so you could like, you know, make your own little mix tapes, and I put the CD in, I turned it to the lowest possible volume, I put my ear up next to the speaker so my parents couldn't hear me from the next room. And I play the track, The Beautiful People. And when I heard The Beautiful People, you know, and it was just so it was I had never heard anything like that in my life. Because I was so I was so closed in this environment of I don't want to say close mindedness because it's not their fault, but just, you know, stick with what you know, don't don't deviate from the norm, you know, so, and I just never heard anything like that. And it was so like raw and carnal and aggressive and just something that was, you know, a part of we're humans. So we are intelligent beings, but we're also animals, you know, so I think it just really spoke to the visceral part of me. And after I heard that I just started having this obsession with, I guess like alternative kinds of music, industrial music. But after that, so that was a middle school, but after that I continued, you know, being a good classical girl. And I did all the local competitions I played with orchestras. And then I received a full scholarship to USC for classical cello performance. So of course, I went that route. And then when I got to college, so up until then this, I didn't even know that this thing existed. So I played only classical music. And then when I got to college, I one day discovered because I saw this thing called internet and internet, I remember was like invented or first came out when I was maybe end of elementary school. I'm almost 33, by the way. So in case you guys, what her timeline is a little off. So and I remember they would send out these AOL disks. But again, my parents didn't allow me on the internet either. So I just really had no idea about anything in the outside world. And when I discovered that they had electric cellos, at the time I was completely broke. I had no money, you know, so I finally was able to get qualified for a student. It was like a union bank student USC credit card with barely just enough credit so I could buy myself a different electric cello, a cheaper model. And I started experimenting and it took about, I would say a good two or three years to figure out how to play standing up because the positions are very, very different from when you're playing sitting down. And just to gain experience, I posted ads on Craigslist because at the same time I also was trying to make even though the scholarship covers the tuition, it didn't cover living expenses, books, which are extremely expensive in college. So I had to figure out a way to support myself as well. So I put up ads on Craigslist every day. I was very adamant about making sure I posted every day, sometimes two or three ads a day, saying I am willing, you know, cellists for hire, I will do any kind of, you know, cello that you might need. So I played endless, you know, weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, engagement parties. It was just everything you could think of. And I also played with a lot of bands and artists on the Hollywood strip. And I think a part of that also at the same time, even though I was doing it for money, not very much, you know, 30, 40 dollars for a gig. It also helped train me to get used to a different type of atmosphere, to play in clubs. Because before then I'd only played with, as a soloist, with orchestras, you know, as a child cellist, and really in the classical environment. So it was a really, really great learning experience. And then I would say about three years after while I was in school, it became very, very difficult to balance work, you know, trying to make enough money to survive. And then also practicing my classical cello, which I was still doing, you know, six, seven hours a day, a little bit less. And then trying to experiment with the electric cello. So I dropped out of school. And my parents, you know, both of them had simultaneous heart attacks. They were like, what? Oh my god, what are you doing? But I really thought that I owed it to myself to try to figure out if there's possibly something that I could do with the electric cello. And so it, I was, you know, out of school for a couple years. And by then I had kind of been struggling, really honestly, struggling for maybe four and a half years. I remember at this point, I was living in a garage, but not a complete garage. Ladies and gentlemen, I was half a garage because the owner still parked this car in the other half. And there was this like divider wall, but it wasn't really a wall. It was like a plastic paneling that he probably got at Home Depot. And there was no air. There was no, oh, there's air. There's no air conditioning. There was no heat. There was a bathtub, which I thought was like super, super awesome. And there was a bathtub. And I loved jacuzzi. So I found this, it was like $10 from a really strange discount catalog. And I said, turn your bathtub into a jacuzzi. And you plug it into the wall. And it literally, there's like one little stream of bubbles that kind of comes out. So there's no pressure, but I would like, I remember I pushed my back against him and be like, yeah, I have my own jacuzzi. You know, this is the life. So there was a bathtub. There was a toilet. In the kitchen, in the kitchen, there's no stove. There's no fridge. So I had a mini fridge. I bought one of those hot plates from a Tarjay for, I remember at $23.99. And I'm like, score. So I, and the rent was $6.50 a month, including utilities. And I just, you know, any money that I made from gigs, from these Craigslist gigs, I just put away to try to, I guess, conserve so I can figure out a way to spend it to put it into my own career. And then, so, you know, you have four or four years of that. And I got to the point where I'm like, this really isn't working, you know, like every month I was struggling to figure out how to pay rent and just really, really, no one likes to live like that, right? Like shopping at the clearance sections of grocery stores. And so I said, I need to put everything I have into this like vision that I have and figure out if I'm just delusional. And if I am, I'm going to go the classical route like my parents wanted me to. I'll go back to school because they still offer. They said, if you want to come back, you can come back. You know, I'll be a classical cellist. I'll join an orchestra. And so in the year 2009, so this is five years after I moved to LA for college. I put all of my life savings. And at that time, it was a little under $6,000, which, you know, was a lot of money to save for a musician. And I put it all into this music video, which you can see on YouTube. So my very first music video is called Queen Bee. And it is a heavy metal version of the flight of the bumblebee. And I actually had like a dream, not to get all, you know, fru fru on you guys, but I had a dream about what it would look like. And so it took me five months to try to get all the production together because I did most of it myself, you know, like the craft services catering. I was like running to Ralph's in the morning trying to buy the bagels and stuff. So I really did as much of it myself as possible. But anyway, long story short, my thought was that, okay, if I put out a video where I can show people what it is that I want to become not when I'm what I am right now, but I want to play electric cello. I want to be kind of like the equivalent of what a lead guitar player would be to a band, you know, and my dream was to play with either Marilyn Manson or Ramstein or Metallica. And I thought, okay, maybe if I put up a music video on this new website called YouTube, maybe if I do this, somebody will like see it and they'll show it to them, and then they'll invite me on tour and then my life will be complete, you know, and it'll be finished. So, so I did the video and I waited for about a week after it was released. Of course, I didn't get a phone call from any of these bands. And I thought, Oh, Lord, you know, I've that's it. I have no money. I'm broke and nobody wants me. So but it was like eight days after the video came out, I got a phone call. And it was Hans Zimmer. And at that time I did not this was in 2009. So I did not I actually honestly didn't know who he was because to me, I didn't even think about soundtrack music. I thought music just magically appeared in TV shows and movies. It didn't occur to me that there was this entire industry, you know, a huge multimillion dollar industry behind score score work. And he said that he had seen my music video and that he wanted to know if I wanted to be a soloist on the score for Charlotte Holmes, the first one. And I said, Yeah, of course. So I went in and then two days later, another composer, John Debney, who wrote the music for the new jungle book movie, the live action one, Passion of the Christ. And he at the time he was working on Iron Man 2. And he actually wrote to me on Facebook. And he said, Hey Tina, I'm John. I saw your video. I was wondering, instead of hiring an electric guitar player, I saw your video. I thought maybe you could come and play some solos on the new Iron Man 2 soundtrack. And I thought, this is really strange. This was not my intention at all. But that's just kind of how it happened. So when people ask me, Yeah, like, what made you want to get into the soundtrack world and recording world? And I was completely by accident. And then after that, this was, I would say two years later, I also received a call from the Cirque du Soleil. And I did run away and joined the circus from 2011 to 2013. I was in the Michael Jackson, the immortal world tour we played here in Atlanta. I think that was back in 2012. And also the same thing I asked them, I'm like, because usually you have to audition, you have to go through a whole process. And they said, No, we saw your like really crazy video on on YouTube. And we had to edit some parts of it out to show our, you know, our casting people. But could you do something like that for one of our shows? And they offer me a position on that show or two other shows that were in development. And of course, I took that opportunity because it was like, you know, regular income for a while. And funny enough, my parents, that was the first time that my very conservative parents actually, I guess they approved. And I think it's extremely ironic because my character in the Cirque du Soleil show was kind of this alien. And so it was like an alien electric cello player. And I had this Swarovski crystal outfit that was designed by Michael Jackson's wardrobe designer who did all the costumes for the show, except the the pants, it only had one leg and the other pant leg, like half a butt cheek was hanging out. And so it was not a conservative outfit. And then I was wearing a bra. And so it was a lot of skin. And I thought my parents, again, it's just one heart attack after another. But they were actually okay with it. And the reason was because I was an employee. I got paid every two weeks, I had health insurance. And they said, Oh, you have health insurance. And I said, Yes, you get paid every two weeks. I said, Yes, they're good. So, so, you know, and like bless them now they're extremely they're very, very supportive. Oh, God, I think I'm out of time. Sorry, guys. All right, I'm going to try to wrap this up. And so anyway, I did that. Then I came back from the circus. And I, while I was in the Cirque du Soleil, I started studying and taking courses online in investments, you know, in stocks, peer to peer lending. And so that's when I started, I spent, I had this app. It was called my budget app. It's a free app. And I spent I kid you not $20 a week for two years. That's all I spent. So I would take money from money, not money. Sorry, I would take food from craft services, from catering. Hey, no shame, not too much. You know, I needed to leave food and stuff for the other acrobats. But just a little bit. And I spent literally nothing and I invested everything. So that was really also the beginning of my passion for I guess, I guess, a wealth building. And so, oh, there's so many things I want to talk to you guys about, but there's other speakers. So I need to I need to hurry this up. Well, I'm going to be in a panel, I think around two o'clock in the Hanover room later today. So I'll talk more then. I think I will play one more song for you guys. Is that OK? OK. This is from my absolute favorite TV show. I did not play on the original score for this just so you know, so you guys know. But this is kind of my version of it. It is Game of Thrones. So just give me 20 seconds. OK.