In a small room to the right of Matt Fehr’s basement steps sits his recording studio. Two computers dominate the space, one a Mac on the far wall, the other a laptop next to the door. The walls are lined with sound-absorbent foam panels. It is here that Fehr — known professionally as composer/producer Mighty Wyte — earns his living, crafts his art and does the work that has put him on the map with several major musicians, music companies and even movie studios.

You have heard Fehr’s work very recently, if you saw the Sandra Bullock hit “The Blind Side.” A song written and produced by Fehr was used in the background for one of its scenes. And many more people may be hearing his work in the coming year, as he’s working on a title track for the upcoming “A-Team” movie. Hip-hop artists Onyx will work with Fehr in early 2010, as he’ll be producing their new album. All out of  a basement studio.

Matt Fehr

Aerospace to airtime

Music was not always the intended career path for Fehr — he went to The Ohio State University with an eye on an aerospace engineering degree. But it has been a big part of his life for many years.

“I started playing guitar when I was 12, never really took it seriously, had some fans. Then I went to college and it was really hard to find guys to work with,” Fehr said. “So I bought a little four-track recorder for a PC… started messing with that, entering in music competitions.”

After deciding to leave OSU and return to Toledo, he began taking courses at UT in engineering, and among his elective courses was one in electronic music.

“I went to class, and it was in a recording studio,” Fehr said, “And I thought, you know what, I could learn to use this stuff, keep writing my own music and I don’t have to worry about having a band.”

Blindsided

Fehr makes most of his living in music through the construction of what are called “loop sets,” completed songs that producers can cull bits and pieces from to flesh out their own tracks, and synthetic drum sounds. But another chunk of his business comes from licensing music for other media.

“That’s a very funny business, because you’d think that, as much time and money that goes into movies and TV and video games, that these guys…would be prepared. And 90 percent of the time, I’ll get a phone call at 6 o’clock at night from my agent in Nashville, he says ‘Hey, I need a really rowdy rock ‘n’ roll track with these kind of vocals. And I need it by 7 o’ clock tomorrow morning.’”

But Fehr is prepared. The loop sets that he writes, he still owns.

“So, I have hundreds of songs that are kind of generic, right there,” Fehr said. When he gets a request for a track at the 11th hour, he sends it to one of two producers he works with, they record the vocals, Fehr mixes and masters it, and it’s done and ready.

So when the producers of “The Blind Side” wanted a track that emulated 50 Cent for their film, Fehr said yes, even though how the song would be used was unknown.

“They won’t tell you the scene, they won’t tell you how long it needs to be, they won’t even tell you lyrical content. They just give you very vague descriptions,” Fehr said. “So you have to put something together in a hurry, send it and cross your fingers.”

But the work paid off, and Fehr’s song can be heard in the background as Sandra Bullock’s character drives Quinton Aaron’s character to pick his things up from his mother’s house. Fehr saw the film on opening night.

“The best part for me was, at the end of the screening, there was my name on the screen, and there were 25 people in the theater yelling. So that was a lot of fun.”

‘A-Team’ and Onyx

Just after his work on “Blind Side,” Fehr saw a news story about the upcoming “A-Team” movie, starring Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper and Jessica Biel. Fehr had been a huge fan of the show, but didn’t know they were making a film.

“Years ago, I had decided to remake [the theme song], do a hip-hop version of it,” he said.

Fehr revisited that work, re-wrote it from scratch and asked his licensing agent if he would submit it to 20th Century Fox.

“They said, if you can get a major name, we’ll think about putting it on as a title track,” Fehr said. As he worked on the song, he sent the work-in-progress to one of his co-writers in New York.

“He called me and said, ‘Hey, how would you feel about Onyx getting on the track?’ And I said, ‘That would be great!’” Fehr said. “So that night I stayed up until 3 in the morning… getting it mixed and sent it out. The next day, I had a phone call from Fredro Starr from Onyx and he said, ‘Yo, that track’s crazy! We’re gonna get on it, we’re definitely gonna do it.’”

His work left an impression on the hip-hop group, whose song “Slam” sold more than 2 million copies. They were so taken with the “A-Team” track that they wanted some other samples of Fehr’s work, considering them for their upcoming album The Real Black Rock. When he sent them, within an hour he got another phone call from Starr.

“He said, ‘Would you be willing to produce the album?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m really busy, and I’m kind of expensive,’” he laughed. “And they said, ‘That’s cool!’

“They’re coming out in January, they’re gonna rent a house,” Fehr said. “They’ll be here from four to six weeks, and we’re just gonna sit down here and crank it out.”

An exciting time

Fehr said music is cathartic.

“Whether I’m in a good mood or I’m angry at somebody, I can come down here and express it. It’s creative, it’s not damaging, it doesn’t hurt anybody, it doesn’t hurt me, so it’s a very healthy form of expression.

“The other thing is, I really enjoy making other people feel things, feel emotions. I love it when I’m down here and I’ve either remastered somebody’s album or written a song for somebody’s album and they scrunch up their face like, ‘Oh, my God! That is ridiculous!’ Or when people don’t even say anything, and they’re just moving their head [to the beat], that’s the best.”

And with all the ways his music is being used, Fehr has the opportunity to make a lot of heads move in the coming months. “It’s crazy. It’s a very exciting time for me.”

Tags: Jeff McGinnis, Onyx, The A-Team, The Blind Side

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Arts and Life, Breaking News, Music.
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