Malaysia's Soya hits personal milestone as recording engineer for Oscar-winning movie

KUALA LUMPUR - Not many people can lay claim to fame the way 31-year-old Yew Ping Soo can.

Ampang-born Yew, better known as Soya, has steadily built a career working as an audio producer, score mixer assistant, sound engineer and recording engineer in many Hollywood movies and can now boast of his latest achievement of being a recording engineer for Oscar award-winning movie, Dune.

Besides that, he was a part of the Hans Zimmer Live Europe Tour 2022, which featured 130 talented musicians.

Soya said that Hans had been a source of inspiration to him, and he had always looked up to the world-famous German music composer.

"I like to work with and learn from Hans because he always, not only challenges himself, but also challenges us to achieve the visions in his head. He always believes that there are different ways to achieve a goal even though sometimes you have to break and push the limits," he said in an exclusive interview with Bernama.

When asked about his reaction upon learning that Hans had won the Oscar for Best Original Score for the movie Dune at the Academy Awards last March, Soya said he could hardly believe that their efforts had paid off so handsomely.

He remembered how he had finished recording material during the early production for scoring the film just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States.

He described being able to follow the music producer for live concerts as an exciting experience as there was a big difference between being a studio audio engineer and live concert sound engineer.

"In the studio, you always get to ‘undo’ and ‘redo’ but not for live sound. I know that it will be a ‘blood, tears and sweat’ experience but I believe that challenges are more exciting," he added.

Soya, who is currently working at Hans Zimmer’s production studio, also had the good fortune to work on many popular series and movies on platforms such as Netflix, Disney Plus and HBO during the pandemic.

The list includes hits such as The Unforgivable, Army of Thieves, The Survivor, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Last Warrior: A Messenger of Darkness, The Gilded Age, Outside the Wire, and Love Wedding Repeat.

He revealed that most of those projects were completed in 2021, in between the COVID-19 Delta and Omicron variant waves.

"Although we did not suffer that much by working from home, it was definitely better that we were able to work together in person, especially for recording and mixing because the composer could deliver the ideas and feedback immediately to us (engineers) and musicians.

"Regardless of the tight schedules or deadlines, to be frank, it was exciting to be back at the studio and work with everyone again," he said.

He also hoped to bring any Hans-related concerts to Malaysia in the near future because he believes there are many music lovers who admire Hans’s work.

Soya’s work can be found in many famous Hollywood movies including the Lion King, Ferdinand, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Aquaman and Gears 5.

He also made history as the first Malaysian to be involved in the Star Wars movie franchise through the movie Solo: A Star Wars Story. - BERNAMA