About
I'm Mattie. I make vocals sound like records.
I'm a vocal producer. For the last ten-plus years I've recorded, mixed and produced vocals, and for most of that time I've also been teaching what I learned on YouTube. That channel is how most people find this site.
Everything here exists for one reason: to get you release-ready vocals from a home studio, with the plugins you already own.
How this started
I started the way most people do: a cheap microphone, a laptop, and vocals that sounded nothing like the songs I loved. I spent years figuring out why, mostly by getting it wrong. The tutorials I found either assumed a treated room and a rack of gear, or handed me a preset with no explanation of what it was doing.
So I started explaining it myself. First on YouTube, then with presets built entirely from stock plugins so anyone could use them, then with courses that walk through the whole process from raw take to finished vocal. Music By Mattie grew out of that. Today it's the channel, this site, a line of vocal plugins under the MBM Audio name, and a newsletter called 5 Beat Friday.
Measured, not guessed
A lot of mixing advice is folklore. "Cut 300 Hz." "Compress vocals hard." Nobody checks. So I did: I separated the vocal from 3,054 Billboard hits released between 1990 and 2025 and measured their EQ, compression, level against the track, and stereo width. That data now drives the free vocal analyzer, the tonal target inside magic.CURVE, and the research pages on this site. Some of the folklore held up. A lot of it didn't.
What I make
- magic.RIDE - an automatic vocal rider that levels a performance so the compressor only has to do the last few dB. There's a free version.
- magic.CURVE - an automatic vocal EQ that moves your vocal toward the measured tonal balance of the hits.
- Vocal Magic - 75+ vocal presets built with stock plugins for FL Studio, Logic Pro, Ableton Live and GarageBand. Ten of them are free.
- Pro Vocals in 60 Minutes - the recording, editing and mixing process, start to finish.
- Free tools - the vocal analyzer, the MILLI delay calculator, and the tutorials, which are free and always will be.
How I work
Stock plugins first. If a technique needs a paid plugin, I say so, and I try to show the stock version too. Every product on this site is something I use on my own vocals. And when I can measure a claim instead of repeating it, I measure it.
Where to find me
Questions about a product, a mix, or something in a video: send me a message. I read all of them.