In an era where the internet and television have become extraordinarily intertwined, utilizing music has become paramount for television networks. Music consumption takes place primarily on the web and choice placement on TV has become not just a great way to break upcoming artists but, also, in demographic terms, perhaps the best method an artist can use to pinpoint exactly who’s hearing their music.
Matt Feldman (AKA Matt FX) was immersed in music from a young age. The son of a conductor, Feldman attended LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts in New York, gigged in bands and consumed not just the music he heard at home but also what he was hearing while playing Xbox.
His understanding of music theory, coupled with his ability to adapt to changing music industry trends in the internet era, landed him his first job as Music Supervisor at the age of only 18 on MTV’s Skins.
His roots as a New Yorker engrossed in everything from indie rock to underground electronic music made him the perfect fit supervising music for Comedy Central’s breakout hit Broad City. As a vehicle for the comedic mishaps and city exploration of comediennes Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, Broad City’s unsung third main character is the city of New York itself.
As Broad City Music Supervisor, Feldman chooses music that sets a tone of for the show in short three or four second bursts alongside lengthier audio montages. But it’s his discerning taste that establishes the city itself as a character: different genres speak for different boroughs and neighborhoods and enhance the personalities of Abbi and Ilana’s characters in the process.
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Using social media to connect with viewers and musicians alike, Feldman has created a new bond between TV network and audience, and has done it largely by featuring the music of unsigned artists (often ones he’s come into contact with via the web). When he’s not busy creating his own electronic music, Feldman is working to help further the careers of the artists he’s discovered or networks with on social media.
I spoke over the phone with Matt FX about the sounds that influenced him early on, changing music and television consumption methods, the importance of networking, helping young artists find exposure and his work as Music Supervisor on both Comedy Central’s Broad City and Hulu’s Difficult People.
Matt Feldman can be found on Twitter @MATTFXFXFXFX. An edited transcript of our conversation follows below…
Your father was a conductor and you grew up around, and immersed in, music from a very young age. Was there a particular moment early on when you realized that your connection with music might’ve been a bit stronger than that of most kids, that it was something you wanted to be associated with for the rest of your life and do for a living?
My father told me a story when I was a kid – I actually remember sitting in the back of the car hearing this for the first time at maybe three or four years old – and he told me that he’d worked with Sting. Without even knowing who Sting was or what The Police sounded like, or literally a single song by him, he told me that Sting could pick up any instrument and within ten minutes play something beautiful on it.
That stuck with me immediately as something that I wanted to do. I just thought it was so cool. It was like speaking music almost as a language. And I think that was maybe the first moment where I realized this might be for me.
I definitely think it was much, much later that I would consider my connection stronger. Going to boarding school and then going to LaGuardia [High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts], I was always around kids who all thought their connection was stronger. It was the type of thing where that didn’t necessarily come until, I think, maybe after I had graduated high school – out in the real world so to speak.
You just mentioned Sting and I’ve heard you namecheck a lot of influences that kind of run the musical gamut as far as styles or genres go. It’s interesting because I think it reflects the musical tastes of millennials now in the internet era where most early listening isn’t confined to just what’s on the radio and isn’t pigeonholed by genre alone. You also feature a wide array of artists in the music you feature in the shows you work on. Who were some of the biggest influences on you over the years that might be reflected in your programming tastes now?
Getting started, definitely The Beatles. That was just all I heard. I was pretty sheltered from a young age.
There’s a video game that came out for Xbox [Jet Set Radio Future] that was a very kind of left field, Japanese, cel-shaded animation game in which you play a bunch of ragtag roller skaters skating around Tokyo two hundred years in the future spray painting graffiti everywhere. And the soundtrack to that game was so bizarre and so wild – especially as someone who was stuck in boarding school who had two three week vacations a couple of times a year to live as a normal kid, but otherwise did not have that opportunity. [The soundtrack featured] everything from the Beastie Boys to Paul Oakenfold to Cibo Matto…If it was weird in the late 90’s they had it on that soundtrack.
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And that was really the first time where I was hearing music that I did not like but wanted to listen to more. It was this weird feeling where I was like, “I hate this…but why do I keep wanting to listen to it?” And that definitely opened my ears.
I think the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with Fever to Tell, were another group that sort of reconditioned my tastes. I had heard “Maps” and was like, “Oh, I’m getting an album of ten songs that sound like ‘Maps!’” And Fever to Tell was not that at all! But after two or three listens, it was like, “Oh, this is actually genius.”
Skipping a few years into the future…hip-hop, I got in late but definitely [enjoyed] kind of the old school guard: De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest – and Biggie on the other side. As a New Yorker…every single kid who goes to public high school in New York knows every word to “Gimme the Loot” by Biggie. Every word. It’s like the Lord’s Prayer of high school.
But I think after that high school period, James Blake was the first artist to kind of blow my mind a little bit. And that I think is about my stronger connection [to music] than other people. [I know that] for a fact actually.
I think listening to James Blake and proving that – kind of showing my father his music – there is so much classical and choral influence (even more so in the instrumental, kind of post-dubstep stuff that he put out before he started singing).
He’s got these amazing sort of leading tones – I’m trying to think of the right terminology – but harmonies that you don’t really see in music anymore: the way that he would turn a drum into kind of a melody in the third section and all these different chord progressions that felt very classical and very church-like.
That was something that resonated with me on a very deep, sentimental level. But the fact that it was also so future and so unheard of was also sort of like, “Back to the drawing board, Matt!” That kind of feeling.
The choral pieces you cited run long in length, which is the opposite of how you’re using music in Broad City. What’s it like trying to establish a mood or set a scene in that show in, literally, only three or four seconds of audio at a time?
I mean, look, it’s 2016! Who thought that Vine was going to make it as a social network, as one of the ones that stuck around? And they’re not going anywhere. It’s a seven second video, social network. I really do think you only need a couple of seconds to make an impact.
Kind of really early on, when I met Abbi [Jacobson] and Ilana [Glazer], and was kind of playing them the music that I sort of represented – stuff that my friends were making, stuff that I loved that was unsigned and maybe not yet unearthed by the public – it became very clear immediately that that sound sort of fell directly in line with what they imagined for the show and what they would listen to.
For the purposes of the show, we just use the best three seconds of a beat. Not every three seconds of that beat [may] sound as professional or as good as the one that we used. But [maybe] we used the one right before the beat drops out and comes back in. And [once] you give it a little loop, it becomes a little nugget, a little pearl, you know?
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New York City is kind of the unsung third main character of Broad City alongside Abbi and Ilana. Do you think that the music you select for that show speaks for that character, defines the different boroughs and neighborhoods – almost as character traits – and, in a way, helps to define that overall character?
100%. Definitely. Not everyone will necessarily notice but there’s sort of a soundtrack that’s playing in the girls’ heads. I think some of these three second transitions – both the short little bursts as well as these big montage scenes – that’s sort of between the girls and the viewer. It’s almost like [what’s going on] in their heads.
But then, with all the background music… “Oh, this is the Upper East Side?” [To establish that, I add] classical music. “Oh, this is the Village?” It’s gonna be a rock band. Where, at a warehouse party, it’s like… I cut my teeth on warehouse parties. I know exactly what house tracks to play there. In that respect, yeah, New York… I put bachata in this season because they’re walking past a deli in Bushwick and that’s what’s playing out there.
I try to stay respectful of what the sound really is out here.
You’re very active via social media and have put together a few videos for the Comedy Central website explaining some of the thought behind your musical choices, pulling back the curtain a bit, so to speak, for viewers. How important is it now in an age where television programming and the internet are so closely intertwined to be so hyperconnected with your audience?
For me, it’s crucial. My audience could be my colleague tomorrow. I don’t know who out there has something where I could help someone and someone could help me. So many of the artists I’m meeting these days, and I’m getting to know, are either in a foreign country or six stops away on the train – but we would’ve never met because we don’t have any mutual friends. Social networking, for me, in many ways, feels just like that.
I’ve heard you say that around 80% of the music you feature comes by way of unsigned artists. It’s obviously easier than ever for an artist to get their stuff out there… which, at the same time, kind of makes it harder than ever to break through. You’ve broken major acts now like Phantogram via platforms on MTV, Comedy Central and Hulu. How important is it to you to keep helping these young artists find exposure?
Oh, it’s vital. That’s all I’m really interested in. Even this season, to be perfectly honest, that 80% number has gone down because we’ve been able to use some bigger artists who I didn’t think we’d ever be able to use. As much as there’s a benefit to that, my heart will always be in working with, promoting, developing – if it’s an intimate relationship – but just uplifting unsigned artists. That’s where I feel the most passionate for music I think.
When it comes to something like a TV sitcom, I would imagine that the budget you’re given by the network dictates a lot of what you can and can’t do. But, as you just alluded to, you’ve recently featured music on Broad City by signed, major label artists like Drake and Lady Gaga (as well as the unsigned acts we touched on earlier). How hard is it to strike that balance?
It’s funny you say that…the budget doesn’t change; the artists just get more interested. Or at least that’s been my case so far. I would love to have more money to play around with. These types of things are way, way above my pay grade. These decisions are made without asking me about my opinion about it. But there are a few labels, a few publicists out there who, regardless of the fact that they’re representing big artists, understand the value of something like this. In some cases, the artists themselves are pushing for it. [In episode two of season three], we had [“Only You” by] Mac DeMarco on [Broad City]. And that is someone I would’ve never imagined I could afford. But, thanks to his team, thanks to the people around him – shout-out to Downtown Records who do his licensing – we were able to get him into a montage.
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You also work on Hulu’s Difficult People which is basically the polar opposite of Broad City. It’s aimed at an older demographic and, unlike the hip-hop and underground electronic music that gets featured in Broad City, Difficult People features cameos by Blondie’s Debbie Harry and makes jokes about David Byrne. Has it become difficult, at any point, to ensure your music knowledge remains as well-rounded as I would imagine it needs to be to program these different shows?
It’s a little bit like chicken and egg in that, I don’t think I would be as sharp had I not started working on [Difficult People]. And I’m fine to admit that. So, for me, it wasn’t always clear. But I judge the music, I hear what I hear and I know where to go with it.
It’s definitely not the stuff I listen to every day. I’m fine to admit that as well. I leave the Difficult People office and I put on a DJ mix. But I still love it. It’s still stuff I admire.
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One Response
Excellent article, I hope to one day submit some music to Matt FX.
Jesus V.
http://Www.JesusVelazquezMusic.com