Meet Matthew Patrei | Music Teacher and Music Maker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Matthew Patrei and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Matthew, what do you attribute your success to?
That’s a big question.  I think that similar to painting, sculpture, or any kind of design, making music is a form of art practice. There are all kinds of challenges with figuring out a creative process that works for you, finding rituals to help stimulate your creative energies, and carving out the insane amount of time it takes to create the flavors of sound that express what you want to express in your music.

So I think there are many factors for success depending on a person’s desires and hopes for their art practice. For me, I think the most important factors are the personal love and confidence that you have in the specific activities of your art. I love the process of making music with the tools that I have.  My tools are guitar, bass guitar, piano, and producing music in Ableton.  So even in times that I feel bummed or frustrated, I always come back to my good feelings about the tools. The sounds of the instruments reconnects me with my love of the practice, no matter where I am with it in my head.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
That’s really sweet, thank you.

I have two main focal points at this stage of my career. First, I am focused on teaching piano, guitar, voice, and music production. And I love the process of making original songs.

As a teacher I’m helping students to understand how music works and how to make progress with their instruments. Younger kids are naturally playful and curious, so I like to play musical games with them. For example, I’ve adapted the game “memory” to the piano. Using little cards with notes on them, if the kids can match “G” with another “G”, they win and put the G note on top of the G key. Then we sing the note together. These kinds of games help the kids map the notes of the piano, memorize pitches, and have fun with music. For other students I teach the skills of music via the types of music that they like. I like to teach scales and chord inversions through modeling and illustrations on piano or guitar, and then use songs that a student already knows to give further examples of options. Lately my students have been playing songs by Alicia Keys, Taylor Swift, Tears For Fears, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Etta James, Nas, Beethoven, and the Beatles.

As a music maker – I love making original songs.  This year I’ve been working on a new Yasei Mare project which will be released later in October. This will be my fourth EP since 2019. These songs feature a stronger emphasis on percussion and synthesizers than my earlier EPs.  The tunes have a variety of familiar sounds like violins and cellos, flutes, pianos, and vocal samples. The arrangements are more experimental, and they hint at various genres like house, hip hop, and jazz fusion.  I’m looking forward to sharing these tunes super soon!

How did I get to this place professionally?  Wow, that’s another big question.  I had been working as a carpenter and playing music as a hobby. After about 12 years of carpentry work and playing with different music groups, I decided to take courses at Berklee and dive deep into the music-making world. Over time I started to feel like music was the main thing I wanted to do, and I wanted to switch my life around so that I could be involved in music every day.  As I was playing and studying music more in depth, I kept finding more inspiration through conversations with classmates and the topics and activities of the courses.  Eventually I bought the Ableton Live suite, and I took classes in music production and specific types of software devices.  That was important for me because it meant that I didn’t need to rely on any other musicians to make music.

So I started composing, recording, and producing music in my little apartment back in the summer of 2019. Of course it wasn’t easy. I learned a lot about myself in that process.  Sometimes I would get frustrated when I could hear a bassline in my head, but I couldn’t play it. So I had to rehearse it and do about 17 takes just to get it!  And it took SO LONG, so I had to just be patient with it.   Other times I felt super sad, like when I was spending all this time on recording and producing, and it felt like nobody cared, or maybe no one would listen to it.

But putting the challenges aside, the abstract beauty of music has a way of re-inspiring me, always bringing me back to the real purpose. It’s such a powerful and intense art form, so that even when it feels hard or when I feel moments of sadness or frustration, the beyond-words-sick-radness of the music brings me back to the heart of it. I’m thinking of songs like “Sowing the Seeds of Love” by Tears for Fears, “If I Ain’t Got You” by Alicia Keys, “Ocean Breathes Salty” by Modest Mouse, “Into the Nature” by Hardfloor, “Hate the Club” by Kehlani, “Blame It On the Sun” by Stevie Wonder, “Photograph” by Weezer, “I’m Only Sleeping” by the Beatles, and so many more.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
That’s a great question! SoCal has so many rad spots. I like to be outdoors most of the time, so most of my play-fun time is running, biking, swimming, and eating good food. I would take friends to beaches in Encinitas and La Jolla. I’d take them to restaurants like City Tacos and Encontro in North Park. I’d hit up a Padres game at Petco Park and go for bike rides along the PCH between Encinitas and Solana. And I love the flavors at Normita’s Surf City tacos in Huntington Beach. There are so many great spots in SoCal – where could this list ever stop???

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I have to give a shoutout to my mom and dad for getting me a small Yamaha guitar for my 13th birthday.  They set me up with guitar lessons in this smelly basement of an old brick building in downtown Syracuse, NY.  Rick, my first guitar teacher, was a jazz player who taught me Beatles and Led Zeppelin songs.

I definitely have to recognize my professors at Berklee, especially Robin Stone, Dennis Desantis, and Brian Funk. I studied guitar improvisation, music composition, and music production with super smart teachers, and the feedback and assignments helped to push me further than I could’ve imagined.  And of course music is a huge universe and I’m still learning, which is something that I love about art and music.

I also have to thank family and friends including Anne, Dan, Naushon, Brad, Dena, Margo, Roger, Bill, Barb, Dennis, Zack, Miguel, Siz, Philip, Josh, and everyone that’s supported me through the years and come out to live shows.  Thank you!!

Website: www.yaseimaremusic.com

Instagram: @matthewsounds

Other: Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/matthew-patrei

Image Credits
Matthew Patrei I took all the photos