Meet Matan Kaufman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matan Kaufman.

So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up in a small city, Kfar Saba, in the center of Israel. The thing I loved about my hometown as a kid is that there was so much awareness for music cultural and encouraging kids at young age to start to playing instruments and sing. My parents embraced it and bought me my first Roland keyboard when I was five years old. As a kid, I loved to mess with the keyboard and sing. Not sure I knew exactly what I was doing back then. My parents signed me to classical music training and I self-taught myself to play piano and started to explore melodies and write songs and sing much more. In high school, I majored music which exposed me to so many new paths and genres. I joined an A-cappella group back then, Quinta.5, and got exposed to the endless possibilities of creating music with only human voices. We worked together for over ten years. While performing and singing across the country as well as in Europe and United States, I started to build my first home studio and started to explore this new world of creating music in the studio.

My first projects were to explore working with Vocals and record the first albums of Quinta.5. I quickly enrolled to study at Rimon College of Music in Israel. Rimon was such a great place to explore the contemporary music and music production. I started to compose and arrange and work with other musicians together. I learned basic audio techniques and a lot of great production tools. Rimon has collaboration with Berklee College of Music in Boston. On my second year at Rimon, I was lucky to audition to Berklee and received a nice scholarship that could help me keep pursuing my passion for music. I moved to Boston during fall 2015 as I majored music production and audio engineering. I gained so much knowledge and tools, using the amazing facilities and recording studios, to bring my ideas and vision to life. I’ve started to work with other musicians from all over the world and produced and mixed various of tracks inspired by the different cultures.

On the learning scale, I learned various of consoles, tapes, signal flow and mics. Arrange and produce, and record a full orchestra, and learn mix techniques. I was so lucky to go this path and have my scholarship keep going up, which helped me to graduate in Fall 2017. I moved to Los Angeles right after and started to seek for opportunities in the recording studios. I found myself doing couple of internships/assisting at NRG, Fever and Clear Lake recording studios. Later I started to assist and engineer various sessions on my own in multiple studios and just couldn’t have enough of it. After experiencing working in the studios, I wanted to learn more about mixing. So I contacted the mix engineer, Travis Ference. Travis worked at Capitol Studios for over ten years, with a lot of amazing artists such as Imagine Dragons, John Mayer, The Voice, Atlas Genius and many more. I’ve learned so much from working with Travis and his clients. I felt this is the place for me, and that’s when I got the opportunity to assist in Star Wars Galaxy Edge secret project and to collaborate for the first time with Disney.

For me, it was a dream come true, and of course I took the opportunity right away! From a music editor to engineer recording sessions and involve in creative meeting with directors and composers. Delivering stereo mixes and explore mixing in venues working on 5.1 and 7.1. I’ve worked a lot with orchestral music and used the tools I learned at Berklee to become better at it every day. I worked on Star Wars Galaxy Edge: DJ R3X Cantina music and assist in sculpturing the music and bring the Cantina to life. I also composed an original music piece for another site at the Star Wars Galaxy Edge park: Don –Ondar’s Antiquities, as well as mixed it at the actual site. I was able to mix Frozen 2 parade at Disneyland Paris and work with clients of Disney around the world (Tokyo, Orlando, Paris, Anaheim). Recently I was lucky to work on my first movie, and mix the brilliant score of Suzan DiBona and Salvatore Sangiovanni, for an Italian movie ‘I Liviatani’ by Ricardo Papa. The Movie came out on July 27th in Italy, and I hope later it’ll get to United States as well. While doing all this, I continue to work with Indie artists and promote original music since there’s so much power in it. Recently I mixed a new single for Gabby Michelle, ‘Twenty Something’, which is super unique.

I love producing and mixing. I enjoy sculpturing music and help other musicians to bring their vision out to the world. There is something magical about working in the studio and being able to create an entire world with just music.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
After living my entire life in a different country, moving to the other side of our planet did bring some struggles with it. At first, it was to get adapt to study in a foreign language. I did talk and read English before, but enrolling to a Bachelor’s degree involves some things and areas that I never explored in a different language. There’s something about going to college here and isolate yourself from what you knew up until this moment. It helped me to be focus on my studies and my goals and to become better every day. I think my biggest obstacle though was moving to Los Angeles. After graduating from Berklee college of music, I made the choice to move although I knew all my friends are still on the East coast either in Boston in school or in New York. Something about moving to an entirely different city by yourself is intimidating. For me, for this felt like the very first time since I moved to Boston with friends.

It was tough at first to get to meet new people, spreading my name out there and explore career opportunities when I didn’t really know anyone. At one point, I remember myself working in 3 different studios at a time, while working on side jobs just to my bills. If there’s something I’ve learned from this road is that we can never expedite where life will take us, but it is our personality which always keeps impact other people and creates opportunities. Network is all about communication and it’s the most crucial skill in the industry. Some good conversations turn out to be great collaborations, and some even create a permanent job.

Can you give our readers some background on your music?
I provide audio services such as recording, editing and mixing. Being able to help other musicians to capture their ideas and visions and bring it to life. I also produce and arrange and help in creative sessions. A lot of people don’t know how much effort and getting into very small details is involved in producing a single track. I think that this is also the reason why I have so much passionate for this world. The opportunity to really capture the smallest thing and give them a unique place in the music. For every smallest element in the song there’s a reason.

I think that what set me apart is my approach coming as a musician and a vocalist myself. Working on Vocals specifically, I enjoy listening to the small things. Often produce and guide singers when capturing their performance. There’s so much tension to every small thing we do with our voice, and at a time we want it to feel natural and for people to connect to it. Being able to have another ear in the studio, listening carefully to the artist’s performance is crucial in my opinion. I love when I’m being called to produce vocals before mixing a new song. A good vocal session can give an entirely different vibe to a track.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I think success can be defined when same clients are coming back to work with you again and again. I think that we’re all by nature seek to be better at what we do, as we want to keep developing, but at the same time unfortunately there’s a lot of ego in the industry. And a lot of competition. Good competition!

I feel that the secret and especially when working with others is ambiguity and being respectful. Being able to communicate transparently with all the musicians in the room and be genuine about what you do. I never charge for revisions since I believe that it has to feel right for all the people who contributed in the project. I know some mix engineers start charging extra after 2-3 reviews and I don’t believe in that!

I think that for me, success will be measured as I keep expanding my client list and collaborate with more musicians and record labels.

Pricing:

• Mixing Engineer – Average price $500 per song
• Music Producer – Average price $1000 per song
• Vocal Comp/Edits/Tuning – Average price $150 per song
• Mastering Engineer – Average price $50 per song

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.matankaufman.com
• Email: matankaufmanproductions@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matan_kaufman/

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