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Matt Posts

Weekly Recap

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

Goodbye Winter:-)

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

Friday Update

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!

Presidents/Valentines Day Weekend

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!

First Week of February

This week saw a nice mix of projects getting finished up!

Music & voice overs for 6 new Renaissance/Marriott hotel TV spots.
Production and music on a batch of web shorts for the Superbowl.
Final, final, final mix on the new Odiseas Georgiadis hit:-)
Production and mix on new song “Have Mercy” featuring a guest vocal from Evan Hall of Pinegrove. Congrats to Evan and the guys on their exciting new record deal with Run For Cover and their great recent review ion SPIN!
Final mix on beautiful and plaintive new Jeffrey acoustic ballad “Two Words”.
Vocals with the amazing Kim Viera and final mix on brand new song.

Enjoy the Big Game (even though the Philadelphia Eagles aren’t even CLOSE to being part of it!).

-ma
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Happy Friday!
Fun week working with young Spanish artist Adiel Torres from LaVoz Kids! Working along side with me on the project was my friend and super voice Melissa Otero:-)
Also working with the very talented Jeffey on a beautiful new song that keep things simple and true with acoustic and voice (we all know simpler is harder!)

In the world of commercial and TV music the final revisions were finished on a new spot for Kroger superstores. Also featuring a spanish motif. hmmm……

I also was the lucky recipient of my own personal copy of the new Jenny Bruce record I produced months back. It was hand delivered when we caught up over dinner with fellow songwriters Noel Cohen (happy birthday Noel!) and Joey Auch. What an incredible voice and a wonderful person. The disc is entitled “Firefly In A Jar”. Please do yourself a favor and check her out. She is one of a kind:-)

Enjoy the weekend folks…

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Mid-January update

Had a great birthday week working with some of the most talented artists and writers out there!

Just wrapping up production and a mix on a cowrite with an incredible new artist named Odiseas Georgiadis. I really love this guy!
You’ll be seeing a lot of him this year on the screen with a film coming out in about a month titled “All We Had” with Katie Holmes and another major role in the works as we speak. He’s been all over TV and recently featured in “Gotham”. I believe you’ll be hearing him just as much as well as soon as we finish this mix!
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Also wrapped a mix for a new power single for pop/R&B artist Shontelle this week. We had a lot of fun in the studio and she sounds amazing as usual:-)
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Also tracked my long time friend Cassidy Ladden on a new track last night. She’s one of my favorite singers simply one of the best out there. It was great to catch up and get to listen to her voice as always:-)
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Lastly, I continued progress on an exciting new EP for a truly gifted and unique new artist named Amanda Rain. Along with my long time co-producer and writer extraordinaire Kathy Sommer (whom I see a lot of these days:-), we are creating some really bold and cutting new material that I feel excited to be a part of!
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There’s more on the way but it’s been a great way to kick off the new year!

New Year, New Website!

Happy 2016!

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday and got to enjoy some downtime with family and friends. I’m happy to introduce you to my new website! I’m very excited about it and about the opportunity to share some of the music I’ll be working on over the new year. There will also be fun posts featuring exciting new artists and projects as well as media from fellow producers, musicians, and artists that I think are inspiring or relative. I’ll also likely be including some of my thoughts and experiences over the year that I think might serve as inspiration in some way.

To get things started right I want to say that I truly believe 2016 is going to be a great year for music! We’re seeing a renewed interest in vinyl and music fans seem to be embracing the full album format again which is exciting! I can’t help but notice Barnes and Noble’s vinyl section growing with each visit I make… We are also seeing sales of some major artists exceeding expectations as well! The younger artists and music lovers I come across are also uniformly much more interested in quality and don’t seem to mind paying fairly for it:-) Even TV seems to be interested as next month we will see the premiere of a new series on HBO titled “Vinyl” (directed by Martin Scorsese) about the music industry in the 70s… I was recently working at NY’s Avatar studios where they were recording original music for the show with some of my favorite artists and I’ve heard nothing but good things!

I personally have a lot to be excited about. I’m kicking off the year working with a few really exciting new artists that I’ll be writing more about very soon (and posting audio as well). I’m also getting to see some long term projects get released early this year which is exciting as well. I’m thrilled to finally get to share some of this music on this website in the coming months! There will be a lot of diversity in 2016 as well which is all the more fun! From folk to pop, theater to alternative artists it’s all going on this year:-) I continue to stay active in the TV and commercial world as well with a new spot kicking off next week…
The studio (Engine Sound) has undergone some major upgrades over the break as well. With an all new computer and software of every variety as well as some of the best new sounds and plugins I’ve heard yet, things are going to sound better than ever. I plan to continuously raise the bar on quality and efficiency as I move forward in 2016. There are some great new analog front end pieces of gear that I’ve added and a few custom pieces that I’m building and tweaking as we speak to elevate the overall sonic imprint of all this years masters.

On a somber note I learned with most of you this morning about the passing of music legend David Bowie yesterday. We were fortunate enough to have been the audience to one of the most important, fearless, prolific and enduring artists of the last 50 years. My personal favorite Bowie album has always been Hunky Dory…can’t get enough of that album! His music, poetry and productions will continue to bring joy and be an inspiration to me always… I’m thankful. Let the Oblique Strategies inspire many this year!

On a much more positive twist I want to wish my brother and fellow producer & audio engineer extraordinaire Brian Anthony a very happy Birthday today! He is truly one of the best in the game and an inspiration to me on every level:-) Happy Birthday brother!

I feel lucky to be working in this field that I truly love so much. I’m fortunate to be able to work with so many talented and wonderful artists, writers and friends as well. This year I hope we’re all inspired to create the best music we’ve ever created! I’m honored and happy to be a part of it! Here’s to 2016, a great year for music! My best to all of you.

-MA