mmanthony

Greetings:-)

It was another busy week at Engine Sound! Mixes were wrapped. New work in television and advertising arrived. Clients had big birthdays. Many beautiful voices were heard both in and out of the studio. Performances were given on stages and in vocal booths. Fish were caught and cooked. Andy Karl moved me with his talent. Parties were attended. Productions ensued. New leases were signed. Epic cab rides were had. Johnny and The Cult kicked serious ass at the Wellmont. Caves were explored. And tonight Odiseas Georgiadis is attending his premiere of “All We Had” directed by and starring Katie Holmes at the great Tribeca Film Festival.

That is all.

Hi All,
April is off to a very nice start:-) It was a busy week at the studio working on quite a diverse palette of music…

-Composing was done for a new ad campaign which looks like it was signed off on mid week. More to come upon true final approval:-)
-There was post production for Michael Kors done mid week with a lovely group of folks having a good ole’ time at the studio!
-More final mixing was done on the songs that were recorded last week for Laine. This will continue into next week as well…
-The writing team of Kathy Sommer, Alex Forbes and Noel Cohen wrote a very cool song which we produced and had the pleasure of listening to and recording the amazing voice
of Kim Viera grace the vocal. What a voice. She always impresses me and anyone else within earshot!
-More production was done with Odiseas Georgiadis and Kathy Sommer and Michael Guerriero on a song we wrote together that’s coming out bad ass:-) Congrats to Odiseas on
his spot in the Tribecca film festival for the premiere of the film “All We Had” where he appears with Katie Holmes.
-I escaped the studio to have the pleasure of listening to my long time friend and colleague Dana Calitri perform the songs of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” with the very talented Ira Siegel on guitar and Jeff Franzell on piano. So much talent in that trio! Dana was incredible and effortless:-) The show sold out and they added another coming later this month. Go see her!
-A hot new dance inspired track for a brand new client was finished up yesterday as were a few tweaks some recent mixes.
-Another “out of studio” experience was had as I got to chat a bit with the talented Melissa Otero to discuss producing her new record:-) Very excited about this! Melissa is top notch
and as cool and sweet as they come. We are going to have a lot of fun making some incredible music in the coming months!

I’m off this weekend to meet up with old friend and rock and roll veteran Johnny Tempesta to hang a bit and watch him perform with The Cult tomorrow night! Good times y’all!

-M

Today marks my 24th year as an audio professional! On April 1st 1992 I was officially hired as assistant engineer at Zen Music on 26th Street in Manhattan by the good folks Craig Hazen and Julie Dansky. I had the opportunity to learn from some of the most talented engineers, producers, writers and musicians in the city and the world for then next 10 years of my employment there as I worked hard and worked my way up branching out into production, composing and sound design .

I am very fortunate to have been able to turn something I love so much and am so passionate about into such a enjoyable and rewarding career. I am thankful for all the incredibly talented people I’ve been able to work with and call my friends over this time. I think that the creative and artistic people I’ve spent my days with are some of the finest and most intelligent, open minded people you will ever meet and I’m grateful for each and every one of them.

A lot has changed since my first day as an assistant but the things that really matter the most have remained a constant. There is no replacement for a great song. There is no replacement for a great voice, be it sung or performed through an instrument. There is no replacement for hard work, determination and creativity. The way we produce, record and package all these things has changed an incredible amount and it always will, but if you listen to the music that is inspiring and rising up at any time you will always find the same core elements. Let’s continue to strive for them. I’ll keep up with the new software and gear for us:-)

Enjoy the weekend!

M

Good afternoon!
Wrapping up another week in paradise:-) It’s been a fun and productive batch of days…

This week produced another track for young artist Laine coming to visit me in NYC from across the Atlantic. So far I’ve finished 3 tracks and have at least one or two more to go for this month’s collaboration.

I had the good fortune of mixing a track featuring a wonderfully talented singer and new country artist named Jenny Tolman from Nashville. She is truly gifted and really worth a good listen. Great things are set in motion to happen for this artist.

A fresh new inspired gem was written this week with team Odiseas featuring myself, Kathy Sommer, Michael Guerrero and Odiseas himself of course:-) We’re really proud of this one and are looking very forward to start production next week! The guys are off to LA later in the month to wrap up some paperwork and get this amazing team moving beautifully forward…

Music for the virtual reality branding campaign is being presented to the client this afternoon. The agency loved the demo so I hope to move the project ahead and start tracking brass in the coming weeks!

I got a little “out of studio” time in last night (rare. very rare:-). I had the joy of catching Melissa Otero live at the Cutting Room featuring young Adiel Torres. They both sounded amazing. Melissa’s voice is a true thing of beauty and power. Few can do it the way she does right now, and at 12 years old Adiel looked and sounded like he’s been doing it forever. He’s a natural entertainer and a pleasure to hear and see. It was a great night. I’m looking forward to having them both back in the studio in the coming months for some amazing music.

Time now to prep for a fun photo shoot tomorrow morning at Brooklyn Bowl! Kathy Sommer and I are going to be taking photos for the new website for our production team ALCHEMY. You will likely be seeing some pics as early as next week from the shoot. We may even get 10 frames in!
All fun. All the time…

Living the dream-
Matt

Greetings…
I will be happily closing out a very mild winter this weekend and looking forward to the spring and all that comes with it!
I spent a good deal of time this week working from my home studio. After all the new upgrades, etc. that I made to the City studio over the Christmas break, I came to realize just how important and somewhat difficult it can be to keep 2 full studios up and running in sync with each other!
The good news is the tracks are all sounding great and I managed to get through the required technical downtime and maintenance and all is better for it…
While on the tech side I must mention how much I love the Steven Slate plugins. Damn… He and his team are really, really on it:-) I just downloaded the new guitar plugs and was really impressed! This coming from someone who builds my own guitar amplifiers and has owned more than I care to share and as someone who owns a Kemper profiling amp…

On the work front (work is a strong word), I finished up and got final approval on a few commercials that have been in the works over the last few weeks and continued working on tracks for the young artist coming from Switzerland in a few weeks.
The fantastic Jeffrey Wilgus was in the studio and we started on a fun new song as well. We also got to catch up on some vintage country listening and some classic Loretta Lynn tracks:-)

Now back to arranging that big band…

Enjoy the weekend and the Oscars…

-M

Greetings…
It’s been a fun week in the studio again:-) A nice mix of projects going on over the past 5 days.

I kicked off the week with some additional versions of music for last weeks Easter spots. Moved onto a song and instrumental track for a new young girl group for the new Lego series. I’ll be updating here on the status of that as it hopefully moves forward!
I produced the first track of four or five for a young female artist coming into the city next month from Switzerland. She’s a total delight and I’m looking forward to working with her again this year. More to come on that project as well as the songs start to come together.

This week I also met with an agency and signed off to compose the music for a fun new campaign featuring big band music! Time to dig into some serious arranging… I’ll be updating on this as I get into the tracks. This is going to be a real fun one with virtual reality filming and lots of CGI. Extended music as well so I’ll have my hands full! More to come.

Lastly, I got to put on my mastering head for some wild new tracks featuring the great Cassidy Ladden on vocals. I tracked the vocals at Engine Sound for my friend composer Richard Hall. Richard was in a very hip 80s english band called Electric Guitars who used to tour with Peter Gabriel. Check them out on youtube. Fun stuff!

Looks like it’s going to be cold as hell this weekend in NYC folks… Here’s that winter we were waiting for:-)

Finished a few more mixes for the very talented Huxley Rittman this week. Check this guy out! I’ve had the pleasure of mixing his music for the last year or so. His current solo efforts are really impressive as is his work with the bands “Yankee and the Foreigners” and “The Cave” which I got to mix as well. Do some searching and listening to this unique new artist!

In TV land I finalized a crazy kids spot for a wacky new game. Got a chance to break out the banjo yet again… Good times y’all!
Of course it’s never to early to start making Easter music so I hopped up some light and airy fun for Kroger as well!

Got a chance to work on and develop a brand new song for Odiseas Georgiadis as well this week. Mid tempo special song that I can’t wait to continue on when he and his team get back from LA working with Kendrick Lamar!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend!