We were lucky to catch up with Matt Huitt recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Matt, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I’m a firm believer that no one can chase and fulfill their dreams on their own. The “lone cowboy” may make for a good movie but it’s not a great way to go through life. Resilience comes from having family and friends who will prop you up when you want to give up on your dream and don’t feel like you can make it anymore. I had several conversations with my family about giving up and coming home just to hear them say “give it a little more time.” If you’re struggling with chasing your dreams, get some friends together and enjoy a good dinner with plenty of laughs, you’ll get up the next morning ready to pick up the race again.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a producer and studio engineer. I’ve been engineering at Hilltop Studios for over a decade and began my own production company two years ago. The relationships with clients is what I’ve grown to love over the years, especially new artists. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with several artists on demos before they found success and to watch their careers take off has been thrilling. Since the beginning of my career I knew I would love the technical aspects of the music making process but being involved in the artistic and creative part of the process with the artist is something I didn’t anticipate loving so much. When I produce a project it’s a partnership with the artist. With five or six world class musicians in the room bouncing ideas off of each other and the artist having fun, that’s when studio magic happens and you walk away thinking “I can’t believe I get to do this everyday.” I’m also blessed to get to work in Nashville’s longest continually running studio, Hilltop Studios. To work in the same room where Cash, Haggard, Dolly, Loretta, Vince Gill and so many others have worked is pretty humbling.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I know it’s cliche but the most important quality is maintaining a good attitude. One of the first pieces of advice I got when I started an older engineer told me, “if you don’t know what end of the cable to plug a mic into, that’s ok, we can teach you that. We can’t teach you to have a good attitude.”
As an engineer, second most important quality/skill is the ability to keep a level head when things go wrong, because things WILL go wrong at some point in a session. When there’s a tech issue, can you fix it quickly or figure out a work around to get the session back up and running? Unfortunately you only get that through time, and failure is often the best teacher. When I started working at Hilltop, it was cleaning toilets and sweeping floors while watching sessions, then I was allowed to do vocal overdubs, then guitar/vocal demos then eventually full band master sessions, so it’s a growing process.
The other great quality to have is what’s commonly called just “being a good hang”. This industry is built on relationships and the ability to develop and maintain good relationships is invaluable.
That leads into the advice I would give for someone just getting started. Looking back, I wish I had developed a better ability to network earlier in my career, and something I still wouldn’t consider myself great at it. The tech knowledge will come the more you do it so don’t worry about that. You can be the best mix engineer in the world, if you can’t network and build relationships, you’ll never get the chance to use that knowledge.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Of course! I’m always looking for people to partner or collaborate with. From the amateur artist just wanting to do a project because it’s been their dream to come to Nashville and record to the professional world of music publishers or labels, tour or radio promoters, it takes a dedicated team to get an artist’s career off the ground and make that dream a reality and what I do, the studio production, mixing and mastering, is only a part of it. If anyone is interested in partnerships or collaborations, they can reach me through email at info@huittproductions.com, my website huittproductions.com, or socials like Facebook and instagram.
Contact Info:
- Website: huittproductions.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/huittproductions/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/huittproductions
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