Heather Duff (she/her) is a Chicago-based composer, songwriter and audio engineer. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, she found interest in songwriting and composition through the Japanese singing-synthesizer program “Vocaloid,” and began to teach herself Japanese through music.

In an effort to combine her passions, she earned two Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Michigan, a BFA in Performing Arts Technology (Music Concentration) and a BA in Asian Studies (Japanese Concentration). There, she was able to develop her audio engineering skills in music recording and production, and contributed to research of singing-synthesizers in both technological and cultural settings, developing a study on perceived-artificiality in singing synthesis from a psychoacoustic perspective.

Post-pandemic, Heather has shifted from songwriting to composing music for film, television, and video games, and is currently participating in the MFA for Music Composition for the Screen program at Columbia College Chicago. She is known for her melodically-driven style, and her hybrid-orchestral works have been described as charming, colorful, and playful by her colleagues.