Marsh decided to pursue film scoring post-graduation, falling deeper in love with the whole realm of music and how it made her feel. She notes composers like Steve Japlonsky, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, and Studio Ghibli’s Joe Hisaishi. While her mom and sister decided to move back to Korea, Marsh stayed put in Australia to attend the University of Melbourne in 2019, where she majored in Interactive Composition, a cross-art music course that offered classes in sound design for films, art installations, dance, and more. “I wanted to create music that could move people like they do in movies,” she says.
Her family embarked on an 11-hour road trip to Melbourne, dropping Marsh off the school’s dormitory. “I cried that day and into the next day because it was the first time on my own and I was really lonely at first,” she says. Her first year was exactly as she hoped for: collaborative and exciting, an experience that nurtured her creativity.
Marsh leaned on a diverse range of artists for inspiration in and out of the classroom, crediting musicians like Tame Impala, Kendrick Lamar, Phoebe Bridgers, John Denver, ABBA, Emotional Oranges, and Sabrina Claudio. She was also influenced by Korean artists, particularly second-gen K-pop groups including T-ARA, Girls’ Generation, Big Bang, and 2NE1 — artists that unlock a core memory from her time in Korea.
College was an opportunity to grow into adulthood in a new, bustling city. In her free time, she wandered around unfamiliar grounds, inhaling Melbourne’s coffee culture and art scene. “I would step out of the house by myself and walk around for the whole day and not get bored,” she says. She fell in love with the city.
Unfortunately, Marsh’s college experience was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like most of the world at the start of 2020, Melbourne experienced lockdown, which forced students — and a then-19-year-old Marsh — to move to online classes. The pandemic was a period of isolation and the unprecedented, leaving Marsh feeling frustrated. “On one hand, I definitely learned a lot about myself, but I lost a bit of the drive I once had,” she says. “I thought, ‘I’m here [in Melbourne] by myself. What’s the point?’ I’m still grateful, but I don’t know — I have a love-hate relationship with that time in my life.”