Meet Matias Malagardis

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Matias Malagardis. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Matias , so happy to have you on the platform with us today and excited to chat about your lessons and insights. Our ability to make good decisions can massively impact our lives, careers and relationships and so it would be very helpful to hear about how you built your decision-making skills.

In my opinion, making decisions is the most important skill a freelancer has to develop. Being myself my own business, in most cases I’m the only one “in charge” and every decision falls on me.

I always knew I wanted to turn my passion into my career, which in my case, it’s always been music. I went from being an artist, to becoming a producer and more recently becoming also a mixing and recording engineer. The reason behind evolving and developing my skills was to be able take part in the whole creative process, and having the possibility of making educated decisions throughout it all.

In order to develop my knowledge and enhance my decision-making skills, I dedicate a big amount of time to learn and study different techniques that give me the possibility to argue every decision I make. In the creative process, a lot of these decisions can be very subjective and solely based around a feeling. However, in my opinion it’s always better to be able to have a backed reason to support every decision made, especially when collaborating with other creatives.

Moreover, being as knowledgeable as possible allows me to make the right decisions in most instances when being approached with a client’s vision, which it’s sometimes very vague, and again, very based around a feeling. For instance, when working as a jingle composer, producer and mixing engineer for agencies such as Pingüino Torreblanca or Havas Creative (both creative advertisements agencies in Spain), these briefs are mostly presented around references and descriptive adjectives. I believe that my experience in the field and education allow me now to understand way better what the project at hand needs musically and what do these creatives actually mean when asking for songs, and therefore my decision-making is way more accurate than what it was in the past.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My job today is being a music producer, songwriter, sound designer and mixing engineer. I’ve been very lucky to find myself in a position where I can live from the music I make, and work with incredibly talented and creative people every day of my life. However, my journey to being able to do this has been long and very based on spending most of my time in my room, working, honing on my skills and learning from the best.

I started my professional career in music after graduating from my Songwriting major in the UK, from the University of Sussex. Shortly after graduating, I moved back to my hometown in Madrid, Spain due to the pandemic. During that period I started producing and mixing songs from my bedroom studio in my family home, collaborating with different artists such as Alicia Por Favor or Blanca Sol. Once the world slowly returned to normality, I started working as an assistant producer and engineer at La Huerta Studios in Madrid, as well as spending time learning from Ivan Guerrero Sánchez (Latin Grammy nominee) at Skyline Studios. Simultaneously, I started getting into the jingle composing and producing world, collaborating at first with agencies such as Pingüino Torreblanca. These years back in my hometown where definitely a great eye-opener into what the music industry had to offer and the many different avenues one could take and still be involved in creative processes.

Then, after spending almost three years back in Madrid and figuring out what skills I had to further develop in order to get closer to achieving my goal of becoming a world-class songwriter, producer and mixing engineer, I decided to apply to BerkleeNYC to complete my master’s in Creative Media and Technology. So, in Septemebr 2022 I moved all the way to NYC to study at the most prestigious music school in the world. My time in New York really developed my skills and introduced me to my now most close collaborators and friends here in the US: Michael Locatelli and Jared Benjamin.

Jared (artist), Michael (songwriter and producer) and I started collaborating on Jared’s project and very quickly saw some great success with his song “Flatline”, which very quickly reached over 10 million streams on the streaming platform Spotify. This was a great beginning for my time in the US as a music producer, being directly involved in the developing of Jared’s sound. In the last year we have collaborated on three other songs, two of which have already been released with great success too, which have kept pushing all our careers, taking Jared’s artist project to having around 1 million monthly listeners ond Spotify. “Pacific Time”, his fourth single I’ve been involved in as a producer is set to be released in late October/early November. I am personally very excited about this song as it showcases all of our development as artist, songwriters, and producers, hopefully being our fourth collaboration that Jared’s audience finds relatable and captivating.

At the same time that my collaboration with Jared and Michael has been moving forward, I was invited to move to LA and attend the Los Angeles Academy for Artists and Music Production (LAAMP) in Santa Monica. I’ve spent my last year working and collaborating here with very talented artists and music producers such as Lily Brooks O’Briant and Elise Eriksen, having the opportunity to have producer duo Stargate (Rihanna, Sam Smith, Dominic Fike) and music industry executive Chris Anokute (Katy Perry) be directly involved in these productions, pushing the boundaries of collaboration and modern sound creation. These collaborations are ongoing and I am very certain that we have a very bright future ahead of us. This community of exceptionally talented creatives has really put me in a very privileged position to face the future of my career in the music industry, and I am very thankful for the opportunity I was granted to attend LAAMP.

To finish, my journey up to this point has been a combination of my own drive to get better and make better music together with the many times mentioned “being at the right place at the right time”. Meeting the people I’ve met and ending up in Los Angeles wouldn’t have been possible with the enormous sacrifices me and my family have made. Now, it’s very fulfilling to see how all these artists and creatives, 6000 miles away from where my journey began, actively reach out to me to collaborate and work on their projects, and I attribute this to the professional and interpersonal skills I’ve developed through the years, putting everything on the line, hoping that one day I can find myself at the top of the industry and making music that connects with millions and millions of people.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The music industry is so complicated that I don’t think there is a “one-size fits all” type of roadmap for it. However, I believe there are a few qualities, skills and areas of knowledge that can definitely make one’s journey way smoother.

First, a lesson I learnt very quickly is that music is subjective, and in most cases, one’s opinion of your music is almost never about you. It’s not personal. Therefore, I believe there’s no point in getting frustrated if someone doesn’t like your music, or if they think your production is dated, or if they think your mixes are too dark or too bright. It’s very easy to focus only on the bad comments and make them the defining opinions of your work, only leading you to think you’re not good enough. However, I believe that art is merely a representation of who we are at the moment of creating it, and someone’s opinion is just their reaction to it at that moment. It’s all circumstantial. I don’t know if the readers will be able to relate, but I’ve gone from hating songs and albums to, in a matter of days, weeks, months or years, making it my whole personality.

Second, I believe that it’s best not to get too precious about your work. When someone can’t move past the first version of a song we call it “demoitis”. Being able to distance yourself from the work once you’re past the writing part or “demo stage” is key to completing songs and projects. How I explain it is: “You’ve already had your moment with the song, you’ve poured your heart and soul into it, you’ve put your thoughts and feelings into words and melodies. The song is there, the message is there. Only you could have made that. Now, let’s see this song as a puzzle. Let’s try and argue every decision we’re making towards completing this project, wether it’s moving this chorus around, repeating this line twice, changing this note here and there, or even redoing the whole production.” In my experience, this has made songs better, and artists have come to acknowledge it once the projects are completed. Finally, I want to say that I’ve been there. I’ve fallen in love with demos and I couldn’t see past them. Only experience has shown me how wrong I was most of the times. However, there are very few cases where the demo has been the best option, but I’d say it’s best to not make the norm out of the exception.

Third, let go of your ego. Learning from others who are better than you, or that simply have been doing it for longer, is the best you can do. Listen to your peers. But listen for real. Again, we make art. And art is very hard to explain. It takes a lot of listening to actually understand.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

The person I have learnt the most from in the last year has been my friend and collaborator Michael Locatelli.

He has taught me a lot about developing my interpersonal skills in this industry by focusing on having a very positive predisposition to every challenge I’ve had to face, or simply waking up every day excited about what the day has to offer, wether it is a lot of work or nothing at all.

He was also taught me that there is always something to learn from every experience in the music industry, and that being able to reflect on them is key towards having positive growth that can very quickly show.

Finally, he has also grounded me to the point where he has made me realize that in this industry that we work in, it’s really not all about technical skills and abilities, and it’s good to sometimes just sit back and relax, and take your time to simply talk with the people in the room and enjoy each other’s company. In a recent experience working together with Michael and artist Sydney Rose (Elektra Records), I was able to understand and learn very quickly that making great music sometimes starts with making no music at all, and simply enjoying each other’s company is key to, in the future, make the best songs possible, where real feeling and connection can show. Rushing into a project and trying to get a song done in one day, knowing that I have the technical knowledge to do so, can sometimes be counterproductive. From this experience I was reminded why I decided to make music in the first place, and this is all thanks to Michael Locatelli.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mmalagardis/

Image Credits

Photos with the pink beanie: Credit to Ryan Nava