Charlyn Bernal was born in a suburb of Chicago, taking to music as early as she can remember. Her first instruments were organ and clarinet playing in Chicago Youth Symphony, DuPage Youth Symphony, Wheaton Municipal Band, numerous school bands and orchestras as well as local musical theatre pit orchestras, sometimes  doubling on flute and alto sax. In high school she took up classical guitar, voice and jazz piano which inspired her to begin songwriting. She studied for a year at Columbia College in Chicago studying under Bill Russo (founder of The Chicago Jazz Ensemble), however after a summer program at Dick Grove School of Music in Studio City, she moved to Los Angeles permanently, finished a BM in Music Composition at Cal State Northridge, singing in John Alexander's Northridge Singers and completed the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at USC. After USC, she won the Pete Carpenter Fellowship, an opportunity to intern with television composer Mike Post who takes 3 up and coming composers under his wing every year. A fellow USC classmate, Ken Eberhard who interned with Mike referred her to W. G. "Snuffy" Walden where she worked for the next 7 years on shows like Providence, Early Edition, The Drew Carey Show, Ellen, 413 Hope Street, Cupid, Felicity, West Wing, Once & Again, It's Like You Know, Maggie Winters, Boomtown, The Tom Arnold Show and The Norn Show to name a few.  It was there she met composers Joey C. Newman for whom she did charts for on Clubhouse and Little People Big World,  Bennett Salvay working on Jeepers Creepers, Love Stinks, Rob Zombie take downs and Joseph Williams (Early Edition and Roswell) and was in constant amazement with most incredible LA musicians that could play anything backwards and forwards.