Mastering the Music Business with Matthew Garber

Casey Combest: Everyone, welcome to the Blue Sky Studios podcast. I'm here with Matthew Garber. Matthew, thank you so much for making time for today.

Matthew Garber: Sure thing, man.

Casey Combest: Matthew, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself personally and what you do.

Matthew Garber: Kinda like a big old catch up. It's like, what? What am I doing? So, Casey knows me most as a mastering engineer. My name is Matthew Garber. Um, I also. I kind of do the serial entrepreneur thing, but I would say, uh, I am a husband first. I'm a dad. Um, I own two businesses. I run a podcast and yeah, it's all pretty, it's all pretty fun. Let's see. You wanna, you wanna hear like how it got started? You want it like all the way back or, or what, what would you like?

Casey Combest: We'll get there. Yeah, we'll get there. Yeah, that's, that's great Matthew. That's perfect. Uh, and you, like me, uh, you get up pretty early in the morning and that's when you master a lot of the records that we sent to you. Is that right?

Matthew Garber: Yeah, so I have, I have two sessions that I allocate for mastering and so one of 'em is generally from 6:00 AM until right around 8:30 or 9. Normally, like the last 30 minutes are kinda like, okay, let's hop in and let's see what we've, what we've done. Let's do a, let's do a QC list and, and then that'll be my first thing I do in the afternoon. Sometimes it's 5:30. If it's a really busy week, I'll be in here. But then normally it's 6 and, uh, so 6 to 9, and I call it the, I call it the 5 to 9 before the 9 to 5. And then I have, let's see, about 4:30. I start wrapping up my other day and around 4:45, 5 o'clock. The second mastering session will begin until about 6:15, 6:30, and so it's a full day. I mean, every day is every day's around like 13 hours. And then go home and be a dad and husband and, but it's all good.

Casey Combest: And then sleep. You'll sleep like down the road when you're 50 or 60 years old.

Matthew Garber: Huh? What's that?

Casey Combest: Exactly, exactly.

Matthew Garber: Yeah. So something about like this, this coffee.

Casey Combest: Yeah, that's right. That's right. The IV drip of caffeine. Uh, Matthew, we are so grateful to have you on today. We've had, uh, your counterpart on the podcast, Sam Moses before to talk about mastering.

Matthew Garber: Oh cool!

Casey Combest: Before we dive into some of the specifics of what you do and what your, what the role of a, a mastering engineer plays in a record, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your story. Uh, so tell our listeners, how did you get started in mastering and what led you up to where you are today?

Matthew Garber: Hmm. So I graduated college. It was kind of the middle of the, kind of the middle of like the recession that began in '08. And I moved to a town called Hilton Head and I was running sound for a bunch of churches at the time. And, uh, one of my friends, Kevin Brusher, he is still a really good friend. He's since moved down to Florida. He had old Viking Studios in, in Nashville since moved to Hilton Head and then now running some studios in Florida as well. He told me, you know, you might like, you really like getting into all of the minutia and finessing things, and he'd kind of watch how I would do stuff. On boards during live sessions and whatnot.

I really wouldn't move around a lot. I like the original source. I don't like, like heavily pushing and shoving things through. I like my, you know, just, I have my little cuts and I have like, okay, yeah, this only needs this amount of compression. I don't really wanna slam anything. He's like, these are kind of like mastering moves and can you like all of this, you might be interested in the dark art.

And so I have since graduated to, I should pull out a red light saber right now. That would be great.

(Casey laughs)

Matthew Garber: I should have come on here with a Darth Vader helmet. But yeah, so I started this business, it was originally called B-Side Mastering. I started that in 2014 and I can't remember when the name changed to For The Record Mastering, there was another place in town that was called it, B-Side Studios or something.

It was a video production. And I was like, yeah, I don't really feel like doing that. So I was like, you were here firstso I'll change. And so, yeah, I came up with, For The Record Mastering and I've just really just been growing small in Charleston. And then really just word of mouth. And I met up with my podcast counterpart, Sam.

I asked him... he, he was offering mentorships at the time, and I said, I don't really want any mentorship necessarily on gear or signal chains or whatnot, but. You know, if I could have like some time we can talk about, hey, what's the best way to like more, like, I really enjoy how you manage and handle your clientele. And having seen a lot of my friends go through him and whatnot, it's like, I'd like to know the best way to cater to this type of clientele. And so, uh, we did that for about six-

Casey Combest: and this is sort of a few years in the business. You've been gaining some traction, that sort of thing?

Matthew Garber: Yeah, I'd like to say maybe four or so years in, I, I'm, I'm not entirely sure.

And, uh, we're kind of coming to like the end of the six months that we had initially planned. And, uh, we're having these really good conversations, just like really fun, organic things. And I had told him that when I used to have. When I was in Hilton Head, I also had a cigar shop, and so in the cigar shop we would, we would do a podcast out of there.

It was called Blowing Smoke. Please do not look it up. There's like three episodes. They're lewd and not appropriate, and we had no idea how to do a professional thing. But anyway, I was telling 'em, man, I really miss this. I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed this. And I was like, it'd be fun to kind of get back into that.

And it's like podcasts were not a thing at all. And so I asked him, he was like, Hey, would you mind, would you mind, or would you like to just take these calls that we have and kind of make them every Wednesday and we post every other week? Makes it super sustainable for both of us. And so him and I just doing that for, I think we're about to wrap up year five, going into year six. And he's been a great person just to learn and grow with. And I mean, now we're, I would reckon to say probably best of friends. So, and then my business has just grown and grown. Um, this is, I think, studio three, and I don't, I don't, I've never really counted how many clients I have. I can tell you.

So we're recording this in December. And I normally have very slow Decembers. This December's not slow. I have, uh, I have quite a bit of work. It's just, it, it, it's just nonstop. And so I'm like super humbled by everyone that they're just interested in, that they like what's going on here and. I'd like to figure other ways to grow it, and I have ideas and there's nothing that's necessarily gonna be slowing down. So, so yeah, I do, I I run.

Casey Combest: That's great session. And you do a wonderful job, man.

Matthew Garber: I appreciate it. So yeah, run two se- sessions a day outta here and it's. It's been pretty darn fun, so I don't mind the early mornings.

Casey Combest: Yeah. Now you had an interesting, and I, and I'm gonna pull this in a little later of for our listeners of why I want to ask this question, but you sort of had an interesting pivot you had to make a few years ago because another venture of yours really took off. Tell us about that crossroads and what were the decisions you had to work through on what role the mastering studio played in your life?

Matthew Garber: Mm. Elaborate a little more on ventures.

Casey Combest: Sure. And I'm not talking about your exotic dancing career, I'm more talking about your company. Company. Oh, your lighting company that has taken off and really done really well.

Matthew Garber: Yeah. My, my exotic dancing days are behind me. It's, uh, yeah, when you get, when you get a father figure-

Casey Combest: With the, the, with the up in smoke podcast,

Matthew Garber: The belly dancing money doesn't really come in as well as it used to. That's why, uh, It's called a dad bod, I call it a father figure. So-

Casey Combest: Nice! I like that.

Matthew Garber: And yeah, so about eight years ago. Yeah, the mastering business has been around nine years. Emery Allen has been around eight years. I think we're about to start here. Eight, or we're just wrapping it up. But anyway, um, about eight years ago I was getting outta the cigar business. I was also kind of fixing boats on the side. This is all down in Hilton Head.

And I was talking to my, who has a bunch of international manufacturing, international business experience and I said, you know, it'd be a shame all this information and like wealth of knowledge that you have just kind of goes to not, and it's like I'd love to learn how to manufacture stuff and do kind of manage all of this like type of industry.

And so the initial thought was to create a product design firm. There was this old, there was this company, I think they're still around. They're at a Palo Alto called ido. And, uh, it was run by a guy who was like one of Steve Jobs's best friends. And this is like, this company would like innovate like crazy.

So like, and just like silly things that we use. So like the electric toothbrush, like they made, they would like the, the first computer mouse they made. Just like little things that like, like in one of the notable things whenever you're watching these interviews is they would say like, we want to see the point where like, people grimace and so like, like, like during their day, like, ah, this, this stink.

And that would be a key for them, for innovation. And so it's like, I wanted to do a, I wanted to do a company like that. And so we, we kind of have that, but it kind of stopped at the lighting part of it. I don't know. Who knows? Maybe that'll pick up. Anyway, so we came up with a company, um, my middle name is Emory.

My son's name is Emory. My grandfather's name is Emory. My dad's middle name is Allen. And so we started a company called Emory Allen. That's that. and so I'm in the front conference room. I watched your video before and this has the best light and the best everything. So no, no fun studio stuff in the background.

And yeah, we, we, we all, uh, my parents were down in Tampa at the time. They moved down there for about three years and they were helping a church get started. And uh, my dad was kind of interested about getting out of the role that he was. and I was interested about getting out of the role that I was in and really just kind of starting another venture.

And so we found a manufacturer who had a pretty good product and we took her product and really optimized it for the North American market. And uh, yeah, launched right about eight years ago. And so I think June is, when we say June 15th. And so it's been a while to ride. So back to your question about how does that integrate with some decisions that I had to make and whatnot, and I mean, these are conversations that my wife and I have had.

So it's like, oh, it's like, are you ever going to do like the mastering business full-time? Probably. It's, it's not, it's not even on the horizon. , but I don't really think that anything is necessarily suffering because I'm not doing something full-time. It's still getting, I'm still responding to every email I can as fast as I can and still dedicating as much of myself to projects as I can.

And in all honesty, kind of having a bit of a break during the day allows me to, you know, kind of get like a little bit of fresh ears. You kind of get your brain working elsewhere. You're not just kind of fatiguing yourself in front of speakers. Uh, I'm not able to do the 15 song record in a day. that some mastering engineers are able to do.

It's like, it might take me two or two and a half days, but it's like, you know what? I don't mind having the little bit of break and I don't mind taking a little bit of time and I don't mind also explaining to clients just, Hey, this is kind of, this is the situation. I normally don't have to, but, and normally mastering houses are so booked out that having like a two day turnaround, two and a half, three day, it's normally I say for like a 10 songs.

I say gimme 72 hours. Normally that's pretty darn quick cuz you have places like Sterling and whatnot and they're booked out however many months at a time. And so normally to have somebody have a turnaround within the same week is pretty unheard of. And so that's kind of a nice thing about having a freelance independent mastering studio is that you can.

Do that turnaround. You can do it like super high quality and I mean, you can like bring tears to people's eye. I have like a handful of emails of people just being like, man, the client was like borderline crying. He loved it so much. It was like, that's like absolutely humbling. So, so I don't, I don't really think that anything has suffered bef, uh, because of that at all.

Casey Combest: So Matthew, a lot of the people, and, and the reason I wanted to ask, so many of the artists we work with in the bands, they, uh, they have day jobs and they're really on the, always on that, the cusp of that question of like, Hey, should I do this full-time? Or Hey, should I keep my day job and just keep music, something that I really enjoy.

That doesn't pay the bills necessarily. Uh, any advice for someone listening right now who's in that spot where they're like, man, I'm really struggling to decide if I need to make that jump and go full-time with my music or stay where I am?

Matthew Garber: I think it ultimately comes down to your bottom line. And so it's like if, like one I, I've only told my wife this, there is a book that I want to write. and it essentially would be a workbook because people don't treat bands and or just singer songwriter things acts like a business, and they are. And so I feel like if you were to look at it through the lens of a business, you could make a lot better decisions about your capability in your ability, and you are able to remove the personal aspect of it and you're able to decide.

Yeah, this is like from a business standpoint, it makes sense to let's go ahead and make this move and this is what, this is what the numbers say, that we're gonna be able to do this, this, this, and this. Give, and you, you essentially just reverse engineer your situation. I think a lot can be figured out with just like a basic plan and a plan for growth and a like, you know, just some financials in front of you.

Like so do you go on your own. I think it's incredibly unique for every single situation. If, I mean, typically it'll be all like, if, if, if the numbers are showing it, then yeah, sure. If you are in your twenties and like early twenties, you are able to screw up in life so much that you can completely mess up any venture you want.

And you still have a whole 'nother life ahead of you to do whatever you want. So like, your twenties are a whole are a "Sure. Why not?" In your thirties, you're, you're, you're a pretty darn young person. It's like if you have a family and if you have mouths to feed and whatnot, it might not be bad to, you know, keep a job or whatnot.

If you're working for a church and stuff like that, you know, it's like, you know what, it's a steady income you can count on that. I know. Let's say like a guy, speaking to a guy. I know that females like to have security and not necessarily like protection. Sure. But like financial. And so it's like if you can kind of hit those miles, mile markers, cuz like if I went and without consulting my wife or whatnot and went just full-time mastering, it'd be like, okay.

We need to, we need to talk about the money part of this because you have me who doesn't work. We have two kids. We're providing for, you have your mortgage and all other stuff, and so. Um, I think a lot of it just comes down to money and just like make an Excel sheet and just look up, hey, what's a basic budget?

What's a basic for a business? A profit loss and a balance sheet? And it's like, where is this money gonna come from? Are we able to make this amount? And so what are we able to put into savings? And like, as far as like, what are we able to put away? Like is there enough to actually kind of, essentially if something were to happen, Like, what is like, like to you, the provider?

Like what does that kind of look like? And so, um, I think it's a multifaceted question comes down to economics for the most part,

Casey Combest: and I think comes down to economic. Yeah. I think one of the things, I had this conversation recently with an artist and I, I told him the very similar answer and one of the things.

That that does too. When you start looking at the numbers, it sort of takes the emotion out of it. Whether you're fearful about going full-time or you're excited, uh, sometimes we can be overly one or the other, but if you look at those numbers, they're gonna tell the truth all the time for someone else.

Uh, another situation here, an artist is a little older, they have a family. Maybe just from your perspective, how do they appreciate the fact. A a little more, fill that out. They have a full-time job, a great job, but they feel this tension of wanting to make more art. But they know the right call right now is to keep this something on the side that's just fun. Give them some advice, like, how do you enjoy doing, uh, Your craft on the side and still really enjoying it. Cause I think a lot of the folks feel that tension of like, man, this is where I want to be, but fill in the blank is holding me back. And I've found for myself, there's a lot of joy in contentment when you just say, Hey, I'm, I'm glad I get to do it today, or this smaller portion. Uh, maybe you could speak to that. That was a very complicated and terrible question. I'm so sorry.

Matthew Garber: No, I just don't think that this is gonna be a really nice answer. So my response to that is when I lost my second studio because my business was moving and I pretty much always keep my studio where my business is, and it's just generally my office, the room that would've made the most sense for where my studio would be and where my office would be.

Didn't mathematically make sense as far as acoustics were concerned? There's a lot of math when it does come to acoustics if you wanna do it properly. I won't say that mine is proper, but I will say it translates incredibly well, which is arguably the most important part of, uh, mastering somebody's work is that you want what you are hearing in your studio to translate, so you're not having to run, put on headphones, AirPods, go to your car.

You don't want any of that to be your situation anyway. The math didn't check out and oh, it was kind of like you're getting like your whole head. You're just complaining. Like I was doing that, I was like, not, not happy. And I just have this voice in my head from one of my friends, Tomlin Becker, uh, very, very German friend and very like efficiency focused and very like linear thinking as far as that.

And, um, pardon my French. I remember he would just say, he's like, well, do you wanna do it? And I like when we were kids, he's like, well, if you wanna do it, just do it. Quit your bitching. And that was just like in my head from when we were in high school together. And he would just be that straightforward and that linear thought of like, I don't see what the problem is.

Just, just do it. If you wanna do it, then just do it. Quit complaining about it. And so, uh, I was like, okay, I'll set up my room, I guess, and I guess it'll be okay. And so I set up speakers in there and I did something that I call on our podcast. I call it The Naked Listen to where like you set up your whole system but you don't, um, you don't put any treatment up and you just listen to the room, just bear you.

This is up to you. You can have clothes on. I generally do. But you just kinda listen to what the room's telling you, and then you're like, okay, here's a reflection, here's a reflection. It's like, you kind of know, it's like your corners are gonna have like, like I guess a screen's a little tight corners.

You're gonna have. I could point to like the screen right here, corner isn't the screen. You're gonna have some low end buildup. You know that there's gonna be an access off the side of the speaker that's gonna have like an angular reflection from, that's gonna be like the first reflection that the speaker hits.

The wall comes back to you. You know that there's like a triangle that like, Is the perfect triangle for the sweet spot of most speakers. And so it's like, okay, what are my knowns? It's like a phy, it's a physics problem. And then how do we kind of work ourselves backwards from the physics problem of, okay, let's treat for this.

And so I honestly was like the first room I've ever done like that, and I treated it all by ear and I love how it sounds. And it all came from just being like, just, just quick complaining and just hop into it. So back to your question, I would say, how do I have time to do what I do? You take an inventory of your day, everything you do, write it down, and what time you wake up to what time you eat breakfast.

If you eat breakfast, to what time you go to work, what you do at work like, like every hour log what you're doing, even if you're just like, At home fudding your dud on your phone, just like scrolling, like the infinite scroll. It's like, I don't know why I can't go to sleep. I'm holding this phone. That's a blazing white light, 15 inches from my face.

I don't know why it's not working. Why, why am I not drifting into a peaceful slumber? Log that time log. What time you go to bed? Log what you do before you go to bed. And what are you left with? You're left with the other time. You, you, you essentially have a, you you're able to see the things that you are doing.

That are, are productive in that day and you're able to see the things that are not productive. You can make little pieces, you can rearrange 'em, but all, and it's like, don't get me wrong, it's like, you know, I have like two kids. It's like I'm gonna want some like time to myself to not be like watching kid shows or like listening to kid like things or, and so it's like, yeah, you do need that time.

I'm an introvert. I need time to like reset. I'm not like Sam, who. This man thrives off other people's energy. That is not me. I thrive off of like my battery's being, my battery's charged when I'm by myself. I don't do it in a rude way, . But anyway, you find what time you have available and you just say, you know what, if I go to bed by 10 or 10 30, I know I like going to bed at 11 30, 12 o'clock, but if I go to bed at 10 or 10 30, I can probably make this 5:00 AM thing work.

Don't get me wrong. I am really bad. I like, last night I got on this show, there was this guy on the Joe Rogan podcast talking about this like ancient apocalypse. He's got a show on Netflix now. I was up till one. Don't take my advice at all, but just kind of know that you do have to come in and you do have to be productive after you do that stuff.

No one's perfect. Everyone gets it wrong. My kids get sick. They, you, they literally, you're sitting on your lap and you feel bad for them. They're all five and snotty. Then they turn around, they look at you, they say, daddy, I love you. Then they sneeze in your mouth and now guess what? Two days later you are sick.

Your whole weekend's gone, everything you've worked for in your schedule. But it's like, you know what? That's just life. But figure out the time that you do have available, whether, I mean, and unfortunately, normally it's pretty darn early in the morning, so I did find out being several years into this, that.

I'm better off just starting at 6:00 AM than five 30 because I used to do five 30 and I actually am no more efficient than if I start at six. I actually burn that extra 30 minutes just taking breaks for my ears and whatnot, and just kind of like recentering where I am and I'm realizing it's like I'm tired.

I'm up at like five 30 in the morning. If I just get that extra 30 minutes of sleep and then I come in at six, I'm way better off and I'm way more efficient and I've had more sleep. So there's a fine tuning that you need to do.

Casey Combest: Um, but it is it, yeah. And just looking for those margins in life and, and where these artists that are, are busy, uh, can enjoy their craft.

Matthew Garber: Yeah. I mean, me, if you're playing like a, like a bar or something like that till like one or two in the morning, your margin is definitely another time during the day. So I hope that answered your question. Absolutely. That was a kind of sloppy answer. You're good man. You're good.

Casey Combest: It was a sloppy question, but the answer was great. Well done. So Matthew is, we're kind of landing the plane here. Uh, tell our listeners maybe what they should expect from mastering. I think a lot of times someone. Knows they're working through the mix process. They're working on revisions. They've gone back and forth with their mix engineer, uh, what, you know, in 30 seconds or a minute, what should they expect from the mastering process?

Matthew Garber: It's impossible to do it that short. You essentially should feel a finality, a completeness, a like, okay, we're done. We can, we can take this to release. This is, this is sounding perfect. Everything is gonna master differently. But there should be a, there should be a, essentially when something is done like professionally, it is like 100%, like it is 100% like what it could potentially be.

And it's like if you are, if you are getting it done properly, then it's like that person's kind of taking it to the limit of what is possible. Don't me wrong, there are some things you might need to do, like a mixed revision that I might ask for. It's like, for the most part, it's like you should have like a cohesiveness.

You should have a cohesive song. It should replay back, you know, at a com. Like let's talk about loudness at a, at a competitive level. Um, I think loudness is becoming less and less important as we move forward in this musical journey. I think it's, it's not less important for me, it's less important for the artist I'm feeling like, and more times than not, I'll deliver it at a level that I believe it food be delivered at.

And I mean, a handful of times I'll have people like, Hey, can we dial it back a little bit? It's like, I'd love that. That would be great. We have more dynamics. We can, we have all this now preserved. That's fine. But if you're giving, if you're giving the Mastery engineer references of stuff that's peaking at minus four, it's like, okay, yeah, sure.

It's like, we'll see how close we can. Um, but what you should have is you should have, let's say it's a song you should have, you should have a highly int intelligible song. It should sound, um, professionally polished, like, kind of buffed out. I, I, I'd say the difference between mixing and mastering is kind of the difference between like washing and waxing a car.

My wife had a great analogy for it. You said the difference between mixing and mastering is, you know, like when, uh, you know, like when Toy Story came out in like 95 on Pixar. And you had like the, like the people kind of looked weird and the faces kinda looked weird, but now you see Pixar today and it's like, whoa, this is like, like I could see this guy in the street.

It's kinda like the difference between that and not saying anything's wrong because like Pixar at 95 was like mind blowing when you consider like we had a ladin mermaid. I think that would be my one minute answer. You have to trim it down, but that's good. Trim it down. No, no, that was good. That's what I think what I would say.

If you have a record though, I would say that you have a complete cohesiveness and that you have a fluidity to the album, and hopefully there was not chaos going into it, but if one song was really loud, one song was really not. If that's intentional, maybe there's like a nice little bridge between that where it's like, this gap now makes sense.

Or it's like, how do we, and, and a lot of, a lot of my job is like, how do we tell this story of this record? And so, but I think back to what I said at the beginning, there should be like a sense of. This is what was in my head in the beginning. Now it's out and I can, I can release it. This is, this is perfect.

This is finished. We are done here. And you can, you can start on the next record. So that's my hope. That's my goal.

Casey Combest: That's right. No, that's good, Matthew. Well, Matthew, where should people, uh, find out about your and Sam's podcast? And for the record master?

Matthew Garber: Oh, uh, you mean, uh, you mean, you mean that, that right there.

Oh, look at that. Aw,

Casey Combest: you guys that are just audio listeners, you can't see this beautiful logo they have. It's like

Matthew Garber: the price is right. . Um, yeah, it's uh, so where can you find us? Was that the question? I was worried about bringing the mug into view. No,

Casey Combest: you're good. You're good. Yeah. Tell, tell our listeners, uh, where they can find out more about your podcast and then if they wanted to use you for mastering, uh, how would they do this?

Yeah, so, uh, the

Matthew Garber: podcast can really be found anywhere that podcasts are found. So iTunes, uh, I know like Google Play, I know Stitcher and Overcast, like, we're, we're, we're all there. I know we're done. I know we're on Spotify. He go to, uh, the attack and Release show. It was originally brought out for mastering engineers, but now like everybody, Like commenting on it.

And it's really funny that we really just wanted to have a really small market and it's just kind of blossomed into this really like, kind of fun and humbly large thing. And we have no idea like how we used to listen to it, but you can find it. Any and any of those platforms. Uh, iTunes is kind of the main one we're hosted on Fireside, so if you search the attack or release show, it'll take you to fireside.com/the attack and release show.

For those of y'all who don't do any audio engineering attack and release was based off of the compressor knobs and I think I was looking at just like, like a VLA or what is it? The, yeah, the Art Pro vla and it has like the attack and release knobs on it. And like when I thought of it and I was like, yeah, sure, let's do that.

Anywhere that can be found, you can find me. On Instagram, you can go on my website. It's really just fortherecordmastering.com or on Instagram just at for the record, mastering and receive my white logo. Sometimes we'll change it to the black logo. I don't know. So what are your favorites day? Right.

Casey Combest: Well, Matthew, thank you so much for your time, man. We appreciate you. Sure man. You need anything else from me? No, that was great. And guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of the Blue Sky Studios podcast. Have a great day everyone.