Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Matelski.
Hi Paul, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I first became interested in recording music through my uncle. He was a keyboardist, bassist and a recording hobbyist. My uncle used to visit us often and him, myself, and my Dad used to jam a lot in the basement of my childhood home back in upstate New York. Both my Dad and my uncle were musical mentors to me and believed in my musical abilities so I have to thank them for that.
I played in various rock bands throughout middle school and high school and I can remember one day wanting to record our stuff. My uncle had left his old 8 track reel-to-reel in our basement so I decided to take it out and gather up whatever microphones and cables were laying around and attempt to record us, The recordings made on that 8-track sounded absolutely terrible but it was enough to plant the seed of interest in recording somehow (laughs).
Towards the latter part of high school, it came time to decide where to go for college. The guitarist in the band I was in at the time mentioned how the guys in Dream Theater – a band I was obsessed with at the time – had all gone to Berklee College of Music. Literally in that moment, I became solely focused on going there. It sounds cliche but it really became my entire life’s focus and I was unwavering in my commitment to learning what it would take to get in.
I ended up auditioning on drums and got accepted. I knew I wanted to major in something that yielded a broader skill set beyond just performance so I majored in Music Production and Engineering. It was cool because the program was like a college within the college since you had to interview again to get into that specific major. But I really wanted to do it and fortunately I was accepted.
In the program, I had the chance to learn in real recording studios from some awesome professors with small class sizes. In particular, one of my professors was a guy named Sean Slade who worked with Lou Reed, Warren Zevon, and produced Radiohead’s first album (Pablo Honey) and mixed the second album (The Bends). We became pretty close. I really admired his record-making philosophy and his sense of humor too. He taught me the value of quality songwriting and I still think it’s generally true that if the song itself isn’t that good, it really isn’t worth going through the production process because nothing you do will turn a crappy song into a great one (laughs).
Aside from class projects, I would book as much free time as possible in the studios at Berklee to record artists in all styles from rock to jazz to singer-songwriter and so on. I was in the studio almost every single day but that is where I wanted to be. Also, being in there as much as possible was the best way to learn. On top of that, I completed 3 internships at different recording studios in Boston and got a taste of the real world a bit.
After graduating, I moved to LA right away – within 3 weeks of graduating. Myself and 2 good friends of mine chipped in and installed a hitch on my Honda Civic and rented a U-Haul trailer. We drove all the way from Boston to LA in 5 days. It’s an absolute miracle we made it. One of my friends was from Australia and had never driven on the right side of the road before. For some reason, we thought it was a good idea to have him drive in the Northeast. I remember by the time we got to Flagstaff, Arizona, my car started burning through gas at an alarming rate and struggled immensely towing that U-Haul trailer through the last leg of the journey.
When we got to LA, I was very fortunate in that I was able to call Joe James, who was my boss at the Berklee studio booking office and was another mentor of mine. He spent 30 years in LA and had climbed the audio engineering ladder and eventually became an A&R man at A&M Records. He was a pretty legendary guy. Joe told me to call him when I got to LA so I did and he said to me, “Make a list of the studios you want to work at in order of preference and send it over”. Turns out he knows the managers of almost of all LA’s major recording studios and he called around on my behalf to see which studios were hiring and sure enough, I landed an interview and got hired at a studio called The Village. That was quite possibly the most fortunate scenario to be in for someone like me looking to get my foot in the door and I will always be grateful to Joe for that. Thanks Joe.
My time at The Village was something I’ll never forget. The studio is actually a 3-story complex made up of 4 commercial (open to anyone) studios, a Moroccan ballroom, an auditorium, and tons of smaller rooms for private producers and engineers. Robbie Robertson of The Band had a room there for many years before he passed away. The records that have been done there and the legends that continue to come by are incredible and consist of the biggest names in the business, both new and old. During my time there, I got to meet and work with A-list clientele almost every day.
Working at The Village was the logical next step for me after the program I had completed at Berklee. It expanded my knowledge of audio technology and allowed me to work with A-list clientele. Everybody at a recording studio starts as a runner which for lack of a better term – means doing the b*tch work. Fortunately, everyone that worked at The Village was really cool and the engineers there were great mentors. That’s not something you can say about many studios, where runners are looked down upon by the engineers.
The Village was so busy that after a few months, I got my chance to be an assistant engineer on a session. That went well so I got more sessions after that and soon got to engineer and start doing tech work and then…all of those things simultaneously. I was able to build a resume of A-list clientele quite quickly and gain a lot of experience.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
As with nearly every musician/audio engineer, it has definitely not been a smooth journey but I have had some blessings along the way and I’ve done my best to persevere because what else can you do?
The first big roadblock for me was towards the end of my time at The Village. I can remember feeling very burnout from all of the stress and extremely long hours (32 hour shifts were not uncommon). At the same time, I was dating a girl who I really liked (and turned out to be my future wife) and the hours were straining our relationship. Things were at a point where I was really questioning if I even enjoyed audio engineering anymore and if the goal of becoming a full-time engineer was even worth it.
One night, I was on a run for a client at Denny’s. I was feeling frustrated that I still had to be a runner on top of all the engineering, quite frankly. I was just sitting there in the lobby of the restaurant waiting for the food to be ready. I was absolutely exhausted. I had a look at the clock and it was 4:45am. I had a moment of clarity and actually said out loud to myself “If I keep doing this, I won’t live past 40. There has to be a more reasonable way to grow in my career”. So I quit the next day. I no longer wanted to sacrifice my health and personal life to this degree. In any case, I clearly needed a break.
From there, I took a job with regular hours doing tech support for a pro audio company. A couple of months into that, I got the opportunity to work as an assistant engineer for a producer named Mike Malchicoff (Kanye West, King Princess, Bo Burnham). I always tell people that before Mike, I only knew how to make recordings but after learning from Mike, I knew how to make records. I learned so many imperative, tangible record production skills from him. I really think he’s a genius and a great mentor. Mike was also generous about letting me bring my personal clients into the studio and that sort of lended itself into me becoming a freelance engineer, which is what I still do.
Any freelancer can tell you it’s a rollercoaster ride and it’s definitely true. Some days I don’t know how I’m going to get everything done and some days I’m terrified wondering when the next paycheck will come in. In my opinion, it’s not a solid foundation upon which to build a family life (for example) but it does come with a lot of freedom in scheduling, which I really like. Along the way, I’ve tried most things you can think of including starting a recording studio (almost lost my shirt doing that) but ultimately, it really comes down to knowing solid people with integrity in your network. I always tell people that what I may lack in a skill, I try to make up for in conscientiousness and I think that’s really important.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am most known for being a freelance recording engineer, mix engineer, and music producer. I work in nearly every music style including pop, rock, hip hop, singer-songwriter, etc… Some of my clients include DaBaby, Tee Grizzley, Lindsey Stirling, Bo Burnham, Citizen Cope, Steven Stills, Charlie Burg.
There are a lot of projects that I am very proud of. One of them is working on Bo Burnham’s “Inside” album (which is the soundtrack to the Netflix special). That was really cool because it blew up with songs appearing all over social media (“Bezos I”) and the song “All Eyes On Me” winning a Grammy. Working on Lindsey Stirling’s album “Artemis” was awesome too. I got to work with actress Sharon Stone recently. She was super cool. I also worked on a film called “Pig Killer” which is a really gore-y, gnarly film. It’s the kind of film that shamelessly embraces the term “B-movie” and I think that’s cool. I was the recording engineer for the composer on it, G Tom Mac, who is a very talented songwriter/composer and a good friend of mine/client to this day.
I think what sets me apart from others is my conscientiousness. I really do care and try to do whatever it takes to make the project successful. I also try to maintain a sense of calm and control externally, even if I’m freaking out over a technical issue internally (laughs). It’s important to be easy-going but not too mellow. It’s important to speak up when needed but to be quiet too. It’s important to stay focused on the task at hand and not get too distracted by extraneous factors.
I always try to be the most level-headed person in the room and air on the side of caution. The studio environment is a delicate thing where the fragility and pressure of creativity, the volatility of people’s egos, and often the sheer cost of being there (not to mention technical issues) can easily make things go awry. This job is about facilitating the needs of the artist – it’s not really about you, the engineer, to be honest. If you want it to be about you, then go be an artist. Yet at the same time, you can still find a lot of creativity in this field. I think that engineering is half technical and half creative. It’s a subjective science in the sense that there are the technical aspects of audio as a physical phenomenon but simultaneously, breaking the rules of audio can often yield great artistic results. You have to use your technical knowledge to serve the creative elements of a project because ultimately you’re trying to make art and that’s what makes it fun!
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I’m a pretty risk-adverse person to be honest. Most people would probably consider studying something as unstable as music and then moving across the country to LA to pursue it to be a major risk. I’m still not sure if it will pay off (laughs). But I was also young and single when I did that so my mindset was a lot different then. Now I’m almost 30 and married and I find myself being a lot more cautious and calculated about most things. I don’t like taking unnecessary risks because it affects my wife and these days, the most important thing to me is being a good family man. I think that choosing a career over family is foolish to tell you the truth. There are too many older people I’ve met in LA that have made that decision and they end up single and alone with no children and that’s really depressing.
I also remember that I actually quit my job at the studio before I had lined up that tech support gig I mentioned earlier, with little savings to boot. That was foolish on my part and I won’t ever do that again. I was very lucky that I ended up finding a job quickly and I haven’t forgotten that. I also thought it would be a good idea to start up a commercial recording studio. I sunk a lot of money into that and took on way too much overhead. I chose a poor location for the studio and it took a while to get out of the lease. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter that there were external factors that didn’t help because it was on me for making some poor decisions and the studio failed because of that. I’m still paying back the loan so I definitely learned the hard way on that one. Working out of my home (which is what I do now) is a much smarter idea and I encourage anyone to be very careful about taking on any overhead in the music industry because it’s a race to the bottom in terms of what people are willing to pay for your services.
That said, a career in music can be very satisfying and despite all of the challenges, I think it’s worth it. It’s difficult but I haven’t found anything else in my life that gives me as much happiness and meaning as music does. It’s easier said than done but you have to remember that it’s ultimately music that you’re working on. It helps to listen to records for intrinsic value and “turn off” the music nerd part of your brain sometimes. But if you want to analyze it, there’s so much to continue learning about music from melody to harmony to arranging to production to mixing. When you do music as a career, no two days are the same and that keeps it fresh. A career in music forces you to constantly analyze and improve yourself to stay competitive. A large part of it is actually getting out there and socializing which is not something that comes easy to me but I push myself to do it. You have to always try to make the right decision even when it’s tough to figure out what the right decision is.
At the end of the day, you have to trust your gut because it’s really the only guide you have. If you’re being honest with yourself, you will know what the right thing to do is because if you don’t listen to your gut, it will scream back at you (laughs).
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @paulmatelski
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paul.matelski.7/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmatelski/
- Other: https://credits.muso.ai/profile/1cda1733-10f6-4ed6-a9e1-3d9f1777ad29/credits
Image Credits
Primary photo: @patcha221
