We recently connected with Matt Carson and have shared our conversation below.
Matt, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
I developed (and still am developing) my confidence and self-esteem by having it challenged a ton throughout my career so far. It’s highly imperative as an artist in any capacity to believe that what you are doing has potential, merit, and meaning. This has been the biggest hurdle I’ve struggled to overcome in finding my place in the industry, and it’s something I still struggle with on a project to project basis.
I grew up in a small town and always felt like music was something I (maybe to a fault) used to fuel my self-esteem and to help me to feel special and distinct. Like a lot of people, when I got to college and was pushed into a bigger pool of talent from around the world, that mentality was flipped on its head. Music stopped being this source of inspiration and passion and slowly became more of an insecurity and an anxious part of my life. I had never dealt with feelings like this before and definitely struggled with my confidence through all four years of my undergrad. In hindsight, I can say that I didn’t get as much as I wish I had out of school because I was scared of putting myself out there and being judged, and that made me miss out on opportunities and friendships.
I went through a pretty tough depression after school as well, and even though the jobs I was stepping into were (on paper) steps in the right direction, I was practiced in putting myself down and running away from opportunities. For example: I was hired onto a college staff as a teacher after a year of working in a fairly esteemed studio in Nashville. Throughout the application process and even after being hired I was a nervous wreck because I kept thinking what if I’m under qualified, what if I’m not giving these students their money’s worth, they should have hired someone else, etc. And so after about two weeks of work building the curriculum, I quit the job before I even taught a single class due to fear of my own incapabilities showing.
Somewhere around this time, I hit a breaking point and didn’t know if this industry was right for me. I knew I still loved music, but I needed to seriously change my perspective and to reanalyze my relationship with myself regardless of my career. For me, this really meant getting accustomed to frequent failure. I needed to reprioritize my learning and development (not just as a musician, but as a person in general) over my fear of being judged for not being perfect at what I was trying to do.
I started saying yes to every opportunity, even if it felt completely out of my scope, and tried my best to leave imposter syndrome at the door (another lifelong journey). I had horrible nights for sure. I had clients fire me, I had bands replace me, I had grad schools reject me, and I also had people in my social circle do the same thing. But it really didn’t feel as bad as I had made myself feel when I was scared to act, scared to try anything, scared to ever put myself out there. It was a slow process, but I can honestly say that now, almost four years out of college, I have more confidence in myself than ever. My everyday is filled with creating music that I send to clients and receive feedback on, which is something that gave me nightmares when I was in college, but now I relish it. The ability to understand better how I can improve is what drives me, not my ego and fear.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I was born and raised in Tennessee, which will always be home for me, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have moved around a lot.
I went to Berklee College of Music’s undergraduate program in Boston, which was an awesome glimpse into the world outside of my hometown. I initially wanted to be a performer when I arrived, but I was really struck by how fun it is to work in a DAW and to record my own music from home, so I ended up studying more along that path.
After I graduated, I moved to Nashville to work in a studio called the Castle Recording studio for about a year, where I was part of the recording team for a number of awesome artists including Carrie Underwood, Jana Kramer, and Chris Jansen. After that I worked some odd jobs, recording live gospel records under Grammy Award winning engineer Danny Duncan, as well as gigging and running live sound at various venues around Nashville. For most of my time in Nashville, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wanted to do something more on the writing/production side of the industry rather than the engineering path I was currently on.
Around this time, I got accepted into Berklee’s graduate school, which is located in Valencia, Spain, to study scoring for film. I packed up and left in the fall of 2022 and moved to Europe for a year, which was an unparalleled experience for me in so many ways. From the places I was able to travel, the relationships I was able to foster, the cultures I was exposed to, and the awesome opportunities that came with my graduate program, like conducting and recording my music at Air Studios in London, I really had the greatest year of my life. I came back to the states feeling like a very different person who had a much clearer picture of what I wanted to do.
I moved immediately to Los Angeles and began the job hunt, hoping to find something in the film industry. A connection I had from back home pointed me in the direction of a film composer in town that was looking for an assistant, and after we met and talked over the opportunity, I was hired as his assistant. For the last year, I’ve written music with this composer every day designed to go into movie trailers, advertising campaigns, and television shows.
On top of my work under this composer, I have embarked on a bunch of projects on my own. As a freelance composer, I have made a variety of production music tracks that you can find on various TV networks, such as Fox Sports, the Hallmark Channel, and ESPN. I’ve also worked with some fellow Berklee alumni on various short films called “Tesoro” and “La Curiosidad Mato al Gato”, both of which have gone to festivals and performed in theaters, as well as a video game called “Andara” which is released on Steam now. Additionally, I perform with various artists around the LA scene every week, and also teach private lessons on the side. I am very busy, but I really love what I get to do everyday and find the work for film especially rewarding when I know it’s going to be shown to a wide audience.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
For me, the three most important qualities to start your journey are patience, open-mindedness, and proactivity.
Patience goes first for me because it is essential to not lose your mind in the process of growth. If you aren’t patient with yourself, especially in this age of social media and comparison between peers, it’s really easy to fall into a bad mindset and to dwell on what you haven’t accomplished as opposed to being thrilled with what you have accomplished and hopeful about what you might accomplish next. Nothing comes from feelings of self-deprecation, jealousy, and self-pity except for wasted time. Practice patience while focus on maintaining a healthy and hopeful relationship with yourself and taking small steps towards tangible goals that will better set you up to get where you ultimately want to go.
Open-mindedness has also been a huge theme for me, as I’ve changed paths in music about three times now and all of it has helped to inform me on where I want to be. The route isn’t always a linear path, and it takes a willingness to embrace new activities, types of people, and new ideas to really imprint a foothold in any industry, especially in a creative one. Sometimes you might say yes to opportunities that you end up wishing you hadn’t, but it’s helpful to know what doesn’t work for you just as much as it is to know what does, and you never know where you will meet the connection that can help bring you to the right opportunities.
Lastly, proactivity is key. Having patience with yourself only makes sense if you are at the same time doing the individual work to try to push yourself. Jobs don’t grow on trees, especially ones that make you inspired and give you a great work-life balance. You have to put in the work and put yourself out there. It can be easy, especially if you have self esteem issues and/or procrastinate habitually, to get paralyzed and to not make progress. Even if it’s a small amount of progress, try to make progress every day, and maintain this as a daily habit, even on your worst days. It will do you a lot of good in your career, and just from a mentality perspective in general.
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
This is a tough question. I took the route of being more well-rounded, and sometimes to this day I regret it because I wonder “what if I had spent all my time on this or that”. At the same time, I fully believe the opportunities I have right now are in place because of my ability to think on my feet, cast a wide net as far as genres I can write for, and my open-mindedness in regards to what projects I can take on. All of these things came from constantly putting myself in situations where I was unfamiliar and uncomfortable and having to find a way through that challenge.
I hate to give a wishy-washy answer, but I think it really depends on the circumstances and what you want. If you want to be the best in your field at something, bar none, I think the only choice is to go all in on your strength and to never question it for a second. This is a riskier approach, but if you’re successful, the payoff is likely higher. However, if you want the best job security, at least in the music industry, it’s not a bad deal to push yourself very hard to become well rounded. You obviously still need to be very good at what you do to get into the door, but once you’re in, you might prove more valuable to whoever you’re trying to work with due to the fact that they can throw a number of things at you and can trust you to think well on your feet and to adapt quickly.
Contact Info:
- Website: mattcarson-music.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattcarson__/
