Please introduce yourself, what you do, why you do it, and what you want people to know about you.
Hi, I’m Hallie and I am a songwriter, self-producing artist, and screen composer.
I found out that sharing music was my passion and greatest source of accomplishment when I was 15 and I began writing my own stuff. From here, I learned the power of music and its ability to share stories and connect people through their basic emotions and humanity.
I love providing a space that allows an audience to feel and grow.
What qualities make you different and unique from everyone else in the industry?
I like to think that my music is one of a kind, in that it doesn’t fit under any labels or in a specific box in terms of genre, feel, and style.
One minute my songs are super stripped back and acoustic and the next I have a drum machine and five different synths. But I think what makes these all flow across an album or a setlist is the lyrics all have so much meaning, and you can really identify my work in the way emotions are represented and the story is told through words in relation to instrumentation.
I also draw so much inspiration from genres like jazz and musical theatre, and I idolize Carole King and Tori Kelly, so you can hear a lot of my roots in my music.
Describe THAT moment when you realized you wanted to do what you do now. Who did you tell first? What has it been like since that moment?
The moment when I knew I had no choice but to pursue music or I’d regret it forever happened when I was almost 17, although there had been a solid six months building up to it.
I had begun a start-uni-now program in high school and was studying nursing alongside my regular grade 11 studies. Such a noble profession; you get to help people and impact lives, it’s stable and you can support a family and get a house loan. But I had started writing my own music, scoring orchestras, falling in love with composers and the power of music.
I remember texting a friend and being scared to write it down because that made it real, and then I knew I had to tell my parents – I wanted to study music. I wanted to be a musician.
I had sort of decided over that six months that for a couple of years and then go back to nursing, or maybe look into music therapy. This is was when my high school music teachers arranged for The Australian Voices to visit my school and run workshops with us.
I met the one and only, Gordon Hamilton in the fantastically complicated year of 2020, right before COVID-19 exploded in Australia. He could see my passion and he told me to finish up school, move to Brisbane, study a bachelor of music and join his choir. So I worked my butt off, graduated high school, and did exactly that.
It was a big decision but one of the best choices I have been most sure about ever since.
What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to face and how did you overcome it?
I am only at the beginning of my career so I know there are much bigger challenges to come, but at this stage right now it’s knowing where to start.
There are so many questions – Should I release a single? Should I make it an EP? Should I skip the EP and just do a whole album? Do I self-produce or get a producer? When is the right time to start solo gigs? What venues will hire me? Can I commit to all these different projects? What is my main focus? What are my goals? What is my brand?
It is so insanely overwhelming. The best thing I’ve found is to just focus on one thing at a time, do it to the best of your ability, tick it off and then move to the next task on your list.
You can’t do everything at once and if you try you won’t be happy with the work you produce. I am a chronic over-achiever and learning not to over-commit so I can do everything to the standard I hold myself to is hard.
So then which opportunities do I say yes to and where do I even start? Just say yes.
Do your best. Then do the next thing.
If you had to pick the TOP 3 people you’d want to meet that could take your career (or business) to the next level…who would those 3 people be?
- Carole King
- Hans Zimmer
- Lin Manuel Miranda
List the direct links/URL to your social media profiles so people can follow you:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/halliefarquharson/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/halliefarquharson
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW7T32axIjqKYI-iZyTK2cw
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2TzVwW7CSgYE1wGnoKpVIC
- Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com.au/artists/B09D7FWLNH/hallie-farquharson
- Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/au/artist/hallie-farquharson/1582109681