Matthew Coen – Singer/Songwriter/Bassist with a distinctive sound built on grit, soul and a deep commitment to his craft.
It started with a bass guitar Matt’s parents bought him when he was 12 — money meant for college tuition, spent instead on the instrument that would define him. By 14 he was playing paying gigs and writing his own songs. A few years later he put himself through college on a mix of academic and music scholarships, gigging up to six nights a week to help pay for his tuition.
In high school, Matt was already recording original music on a 4-track tape machine — sacrificing a track to a MIDI sync signal just to lock the tape to a computer sequencer. That modest setup produced full albums for himself and friends, including 45 demos for his band, Walk the Dogma, that got remarkably close to a major label deal.
After a full career outside music, Matt came back to it the hard way — earning a Master of Music in Music Production from Berklee College of Music. He built a studio, Good Water Sound, just outside Nashville, where he’s recording his latest record and writing the next batch of songs.
For Matt, when the song sounds good, it is not finished. It’s finished when it moves somebody. To do this, it starts with a real person putting their raw emotion into the music — production just translates it into sound. In today’s world where more and more music gets typed into a prompt, Matt captures the soul of the music from the artists, before a single note gets recorded. A machine can turn a prompt into a song, but Matt would rather capture the real emotion and artistry that the song deserves.