Full Bio

Caryn Lin — Electric Violinist & Composer

Caryn Lin is an electric violinist and composer whose original, melody-driven music blends electric violin, sound effects, live looping, and her own recorded tracks to create immersive musical experiences often described as mesmerizing, otherworldly, calming, transformational, and healing.

Originally from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Caryn began playing violin at age nine and started private lessons at ten. From ages 12 to 18, she studied with Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Larry Grika before attending Northwestern University, where she earned a Bachelor of Music degree in violin performance.

Even while immersed in classical training, Caryn was already being drawn toward a different musical world. At 17, she began playing violin along with Jackson Browne records, inspired by David Lindley's distinctive violin playing. It was an early glimpse of possibilities for the instrument beyond the classical world.

After graduating from Northwestern, Caryn moved to Germany, where she lived for four years, continuing to explore both classical music and musical worlds beyond her formal training. During her time there, she had four intensive two-hour lessons with concert violinist and recording artist Suzanne Lautenbacher. Those lessons became a turning point: Caryn realized she needed to stop and discover what she herself wanted to do with the violin.

While in Germany, Caryn also encountered a five-string violin for the first time. Then, on her final night in the country after living there for four years, another pivotal moment arrived. Caryn tried playing her acoustic violin, which had a pickup, through a guitarist's delay pedal. As she played, the guitarist turned the knobs, altering the sound of her violin. The experience lasted only a few minutes, but Caryn knew immediately that when she returned to the United States, she was going to buy a five-string electric violin and at least that pedal. She had no idea what those choices would eventually become.

In 1987, Caryn bought her first electric violin. She began using sound effects made for electric guitar, gradually discovering an entirely new vocabulary for the violin. In 1994, she added live looping, allowing her to layer violin parts in real time and expand a single instrument into an entire world of sound.

Throughout all of the changes in Caryn's music, melody has remained at its heart. Her compositions have traveled through different musical worlds—from ambient and experimental music to periods incorporating elements of rock—but the music has always been melody-driven. Some pieces unfold through live looping; others combine her own recorded tracks with live electric violin, improvisation, and sound effects. Each piece develops differently, but the melodies remain.

Over the course of her career, Caryn has released numerous recordings of original music and performed in a remarkably diverse collection of places. Her music has taken her from the Franklin Institute's Fels Planetarium and the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Kimmel Center,Lincoln Center in NYC, the Crayola Crayon Factory, and even a Carthusian monastery in the French Alps. She has performed for corporate events, hospitals, wellness centers, yoga studios, senior living communities, and audiences in many other settings.

For approximately 20 years, Caryn also brought music, creativity, technology, and science together through The Science of Sound, an interactive educational program presented in a few thousand schools across nine states. Using electric violin, sound effects, looping, and live demonstrations, she introduced young audiences to both the science and the creative possibilities of sound.

In recent years, Caryn's music has increasingly found a home in wellness and healing environments. Following a serious fall and surgery in 2022, Caryn experienced firsthand the profound effect meditative music could have during her own recovery. The experience became an important part of her decision to focus more intentionally on the healing possibilities of music.

Today, Caryn brings her immersive healing sound journeys into a wide variety of settings, including Sound Healing Concerts, yoga and meditation practices, corporate and special events, hospitals, and senior living communities. Some pieces are spacious and deeply meditative, while others have more rhythmic movement and momentum. Throughout, the music remains melody-driven, immersive, and distinctly Caryn's.

Her work offers a distinctly melodic and musical alternative to a traditional sound bath. Performing primarily on six-string electric violin and a low, cello-like baritone electric violin, Caryn combines original compositions, sound effects, live looping, recorded tracks, and improvisation to create music that is both carefully composed and alive in the moment. Voice has also been part of Caryn's music throughout her career, from full vocal songs on some of her earlier recordings to the words, fragments, and passages between speaking and singing that are finding their way into her music today.

Like light traveling through a prism, each melody unfolds into an entirely different world.

Caryn's music invites listeners into those worlds—to listen deeply, imagine, become still, and simply experience where the music takes them.

Caryn now lives in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania and continues to write and record new music, following wherever it leads.