Stephania Martinez has built a busy life and career in music that incorporates her creative and technical talents. She cultivated both at the Frost School of Music, studying music engineering and technology and electrical engineering and graduating in 2013 with a bachelor’s in science. She also studied songwriting as an early student in the Bruce Hornsby Creative American Music Program.
“I love doing both,” said Martinez from her home in Kissimmee, Florida, where she runs her company, That Audio Chick. “A good engineer also needs to have the musician and songwriter perspective. An audio engineer needs to be good at recording, mixing, and producing to put together something for a client, to think not just on a technical level but on the creative side.”
This fall, Martinez’s song “Suerte” (Luck) won the Grand Prize in the Latin Division of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, an international competition honoring the iconic Beatles songwriter murdered in 1980. The award comes with almost $7,000 in audio gear. Martinez also won the same prize in 2018 and 2019.
“For me, it’s a way to put myself out there and get feedback on how I’m doing as a songwriter,” said Martinez. “It’s a great panel of judges who work in the industry.” The judges include icons like George Clinton, Sheila E, Jimmy Cliff, Bob Weir, and contemporary stars like Prince Royce, Sean Paul, and Natasha Bedingfield.
Martinez started playing music in her native Venezuela, studying the cuatro, the tiny guitar that is Venezuela’s beloved national instrument. Her family emigrated to Kissimmee when Martinez was ten, and she started studying guitar, writing songs, and producing her own music and bands in her high school.
She built a deep repertoire of technical, engineering, recording, and songwriting skills at the Frost School. “On the songwriting side, I was exposed to much more music and different styles,” Martinez said. “All the ensembles I was part of helped shape how I wrote music.”
In her senior year, Martinez was the recording engineer on a project that Dean Shelton G. Berg brought to the school, a live recording of the Frost Band of the Hour (where Martinez was a member) at Gusman Concert Hall for the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack. She was the recording engineer on a Grammy-nominated album by another student, Jeremy Fox. Martinez also sang a duet with her guitar teacher, fellow Venezuelan Claudio Corsi, on an album nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2009.
She says her Frost School degree on her resume always draws a positive response. Her first job after graduation was as an audio operator and lead audio operator for ESPN’s top live shows, like SportsCenter and First Take, mixing and troubleshooting on the fly. She has been the head music engineer for Chewy, a pet supply retail website, writing music for their commercials and building their audio department; she is also on a music collaboration app called Indaband. Currently, she’s the content director of an audio-based fitness app from Pear Health Labs.
“I try not to put myself in a box,” Martinez said. “When I was told I had to choose songwriting or engineering, I said that was not gonna happen with me.”
