Daily Inspiration: Meet Matias Urzua

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matias Urzua.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

Hi there, and thanks for having me!

It’s been a very non-linear road to get here, and this turned out to be a total stream of consciousness brain dump loaded with grammatical errors. So apologies in advance, and hopefully there’s something useful here.

I’m Matias, I’m a composer and audio engineer based out of the SF Bay Area. I moved here when I was a kid with my family from Chile. My start in music began at the very young age of five when my dad showed me how to play my first three chords on his nylon string guitar.
Like a good immigrant family, my parents encouraged me to get a real job and leave music as a hobby. It’s funny how most of the time you have a handful of choices: doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc. I opted for the medical route, and for many years, I was on track to go to medical school. I became an EMT, then a paramedic, and was working in the field by the time I was 20 years old. Eventually, I got to the point where I felt lost, unhappy, and like something was totally off. I wasn’t just unhappy with my job but with myself.

Growing up here was hard- a consequence of being raised between two countries is that you grow up with a fragmented sense of self. At least that was the case for me. At home, you’re in your native country still, but out in the world, you’re expected to assimilate completely, or you simply don’t survive socially. You need to understand the inside jokes, the pop culture references that make up 90% of communication in this country; you need to talk football or basketball or baseball, or bring up last night’s episode of SNL, or you’re completely shunned. But when you start changing your behavior or dressing differently, you’re questioned at home by your family, and it inevitably creates cultural friction. Learning these skills, however, is fundamental to being included and ultimately being successful here, and it was a painstaking process for me. I grew up isolated and under-socialized, was viciously bullied in school for being awkward, and honestly never felt like I grew into myself until recently. Top that off with being more fair-skinned than my Latino peers, and not “looking the part”, it put me in a weird gray area where people around me didn’t know how to categorize me. That’s probably the thing that pisses me off the most: people’s need to categorize and label things, or they short-circuit. It always felt like my identity was in everyone else’s mouth but my own. My parents were young when we moved here, and while they brought over aspirations for a better life, they also didn’t understand the culture here very well, so that’s an area I had to learn on my own. My dad already handled the English language well enough, but my mom and I didn’t. My mom worked in a Mervins warehouse at night and also attended adult school, and I was in English Learning classes for a period of time in school. Luckily, I was young enough to absorb language fast, and the additional pressure of wanting to fit in really accelerated things. I could write a whole book on the complicated social dynamics of adapting to a new country, but here’s the big positive in all this: while other kids my age were out partying, I was at home in my room writing music and creating my own world. I still don’t know jack shit about sports.

You see, all these things I mentioned culminated into the fact that I had built this whole ass identity in order to better assimilate into society here, but it was extremely far from who I truly was and wanted to be. I experienced deep feelings of shame, insecurity, behaving in ways I wasn’t proud of, and just an overall sense of discomfort in myself- still things that I struggle with today.

Anyway, I decided to quit my job and try to pursue music. With that, I left behind an old life and old friends. I started out playing in pubs just singing, playing guitar, and playing bad covers of 90’s hits. I was doing this full-time until I was approached by a small label from Ohio with an offer to record my original music at a recording studio. This was probably one of the most important turning points for me. Stepping into the recording studio was where I really felt for the first time that I had found my home. An introvert’s dream- a quiet, isolated space full of instruments and equipment to make music. I never wanted to leave. Turns out I started having more of an interest in the audio engineering and production part than in my own songwriting. I did like a “pseudo Internship” at that studio, sleeping on the couch and just looking over Jim Wirt’s shoulder while he mixed and taking note.
Fast forward some time, and im taking on my own clients freelance as a mixer and also producing and recording some local bands around my area. This is where my professional career in music and audio really starts taking shape.

I was living in the small town of Santa Cruz. I wanted to get out and find some sort of job where I could make music or work in audio. This is right around 2021, when the pandemic was still very much alive, but things were starting to open back up, so I was kind of desperate to do something to get out of Santa Cruz and just move forward. I applied to this random job I found at Meta as an Audio Engineer, but I couldn’t imagine what that could mean for a tech company. I didn’t expect a reply, but by some miracle, I was interviewed and got the job. This led me to the Bay Area, where I currently reside, and where I met my lovely wife. To my surprise, that job actually cut me into the engineer I am today. They had built a full 14,000 square foot facility with multiple multichannel mixing rooms, a music tracking room with an API console, a live room, and a post-production 9.1.6 Atmos Room with Meyer Blue Horns. Crazy stuff. Not to mention, they poached some heavy hitters from the industry to work there and got to learn a massive, massive amount. So, despite the corporate thing not being very rock and roll, it very much felt like a traditional recording studio, removed somewhat from the corporate BS. I was under contract there for two years, where I really cut my teeth in the Spatial Audio world, working in Dolby Atmos and recording orchestral music for video games. My two-year contract was up, and I got picked up at Apple’s Post Production facility, where I am now. I’m still deeply involved in immersive audio, mixing, and also handle recording and production of Audio Descriptions for Apple productions. Meanwhile, while all this has happened, I’ve continued to write music, score some independent films on the side, and I’m currently mixing a demo EP for a new Metal band from LA. I’ve also been lucky to assist and be mentored by a fantastic composer in the Bay Area, Minna Choi. She leads Magik Magik Orchestra in the SF Bay Area, a team of some of the best musicians you’ll ever meet and even better humans. Minna is a powerhouse, extremely professional, cares so much about her craft, takes care of her musicians, and is just so skilled at what she does. I didn’t go to school for music, so in an effort to up my game, I reached out to her as we had previously worked together in sessions. She instead was kind enough to hire me to assist her in notation and orchestration as an opportunity for me to learn… And she’s been patient with me fumblefucking my way around a page of notation.

While this is all well and good, I still have so much to learn, and I’m still very much at the beginning of my career. Throughout this winding journey, I’ve realized that I want to be a part of two worlds: the technical engineering part and being a composer. One stimulates the right brain while the other stimulates the left, and I very much need both of them in my life. It feels like all the experiences Ive had have left me with this deep resistance to being pigeonholed into one thing. The more people tell me to specialize in one thing, the more I’m inclined not to do that. So what do I want now out of the future? I want to be a part of music in any way that I can. I want to write music for movies, I want to write music for other artists, I want to release my own music, I want to help other artists creatively with whatever they need- with engineering, with mixing, etc. I like being a Swiss Army knife. The more involved I am in different facets of music, the closer I feel to it. It’s not my goal to be the best at one thing, but it is more of a spiritual goal to get as close to touching music as possible.

As much as I want to do everything all at once, my current chapter is focused on writing orchestral compositions for films, games, or for other artists, as well as on the production side. I currently have a company called AMP Creative Labs that specializes in all these things.
To anyone who reads this, it may seem like a random series of events, but really, it’s just the nature of being in a creative field. It’s like you’re digging a tunnel and you’re only able to see the next three feet in front of you, and you choose the direction you go, only informed by the three feet you can see. So far, I’ve excavated a good amount, and it’s led me to some random but exciting places. I’ve got a lot left to dig, so much left to learn, and I’m excited to see where I end up.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Most definitely not smooth. I elaborated mostly in the previous prompt, but my struggles started as far back as when I was a kid just trying to make it through school, all the way to now, trying to further my career in a strange job market and with the emergence of AI. Every chapter of life comes with its own set of challenges, but that’s totally okay. Obstacles and challenges, while uncomfortable and annoying, are incredibly important because they force you to adapt and to grow. In a creative field, however, your biggest obstacles come from within your own mind. Imposter syndrome and self-doubt are really prevalent in this field, and even the biggest names suffer from it. Something thats helped me with mine is to just remember that this is kind of the cost of entry to being in a creative field. Give yourself grace, understand it’s normal, everything is cyclical, and it will pass.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I straddle two areas within music: engineering and composition. My day job is as a mixer and engineer and also work with artists of all types of genres. For the past five years I’ve been especially focused in Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio. But the other side is to write music. I write my own music for me, but also get hired to write music for film, video games, for other artists as well. I’m proud of the fact that I didn’t go to school for any of this, and pride myself in my ability to endure long periods of time focused on a goal. I think what sets me apart is my approach to music. Being a swiss army knife of sorts not only gives me a very well rounded, holistic perspective on how to approach a project, but Its also the purest way I know how to approach music. Thats really my ultimate life goal- I want to get as close to music as possible and close to understanding it and this is my way of doing that. Hopefully in the process I contribute something meaningful to people in the music community, to listeners, and to myself.

What matters most to you?
A sense of fulfillment. I think everyone deserves the opportunity to pursue what they love to do, to realize their potential, and to approach life on their own terms. Yet, when your most basic needs aren’t met, this is a luxury. Many don’t have the resources to follow their dreams. I’m very lucky to have been able to *choose* what I want to do, and I’d love to help in this area outside of music one day.
Music and arts potential to inspire people matters to me as well. To me, inspiration is a kind of fuel that provokes thought and kick-starts people into taking action. A piece of art that inspires you has the potential to make you say: “There’s something I need to change in me or in the world, and I need to do something about it”. It has the potential to create change and push you to strive for what you want. It reflects the world or yourself back at you, and reframes what’s important and what is not. When you’re a kid, you’re much more susceptible to this kind of feeling of awe and wonder, but as you get older, life slowly corrupts that; we get cynical, and it becomes harder and harder to get pulled out of our real-world problems. All the more reason why genuine, human art is important. Throughout my life, movies and music have had a profound impact on me and inspired me to do what I do today… I would love to now contribute to that for others as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.matias-urzua.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urzumatias/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matiasurzuaudio/