Two years after graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2012, Matt Schaeffer began working with rapper Kendrick Lamar as a recording engineer. This garnered him a ‘Best Rap Album’ Grammy Award in 2015 for his work on 'To Pimp A Butterfly’.

Since then, he has become Kendrick’s primary engineer. Schaeffer tracked and mixed eleven songs on the soundtrack of the 2018 blockbuster movie 'Black Panther', which was nominated for multiple Grammy Awards including Record of the Year and Album of the Year. He also programmed drums and saxophones on the album. Having worked previously as Derek Ali’s assistant, Matt Schaeffer became highly proficient mixing on an 80-channel SSL in the fully analogue and hybrid domains.

He has since resorted to mixing primarily ‘in-the-box’, employing the use of analog gear only at the tracking stage. Being an advocate of the flexibility and ease of digital mixing, Schaeffer incorporates elaborate signal chains of analog summing emulations, harmonic saturation, stacked compressors and de-essers, and specific techniques to marry the sonic characteristics of the analog world with the polished aesthetic of modern pop records.