Justin Kohler Interview

2:11 Luke F. Walton Scoobert Doobert with love music more i am joined with my good new friend justin kohler um who runs a recording studio out in loveland colorado uh with a Fox and Robyn Recording we're going to talk about all things studio youtube uh developing things and also i see you've got some like lighting on your instagram bio so we've got a whole bunch of really fun stuff to talk about all around music production and and staging and stuff so welcome to the pod

2:38 Justin Kohler Oh, it's good to be here. Yeah, it's my first time, so I'm really excited.

2:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah, awesome. So what I like to talk about is just to kind of set the scene is what got you into like loving a studio? Like what made it be like, I want to have my own, I want to build my own. What was the turning point, the impetus for jumping into this?

2:59 Justin Kohler uh the basically basically the the motivation here was like i've always worked in some studios here and there and

3:05 Luke F. Walton Cool.

3:06 Justin Kohler i really love just creating music i wanted a space to do do that myself and to help others to kind of create and it kind of just snowballed from there

3:18 Luke F. Walton Yeah, talk about snowballing. Now you have a whole space.

3:21 Justin Kohler oh yeah no yeah it uh it started out basically i was in my bedroom uh it was like my bed and my desk were all in one room uh that's kind of how i how i started in the beginning and it kind of went from i had a laptop and a pair of speakers to i now have a laptop pair of speakers and you know a little bit better recording interface to

3:45 Justin Kohler to a bigger desk to okay now i can't have it in the bedroom because we don't fit in the bedroom anymore to

3:52 Luke F. Walton Yes.

3:53 Justin Kohler buying drum kits and guitars and uh it kind of just it kept going from there you get to a point where there's just you have to find your own space and actually for a while uh while i was building the room that i'm in right now we were in the kitchen of my house so um my girlfriend was very

4:12 Justin Kohler gracious to let me have it upstairs in the in the living room slash kitchen for a while while i built an actual room because we've always been in weird spaces kitchens and uh bedrooms hallways living rooms just rooms that aren't really meant for recording and we thought you know it'd be probably a good idea to build an actual space and and get into something like that but that's kind of how it snowballed is it just went from one piece of gear to the next to the next thing to the next

4:41 Justin Kohler next band okay now we don't have enough space to record bands we need we

4:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

4:46 Justin Kohler need more space or now we've got you know 10 piece orchestra that we got to do we got to figure out how to do that kind of just keeps snowballing from there and it continues it hasn't stopped So.

4:59 Luke F. Walton I like that how each kind of like new challenge is like, okay, well, we got to upgrade that or okay, we got to rethink that. We've got a bigger, we need a bigger space so we can record more people like I see how all of that can just kind of daisy chain.

5:12 Justin Kohler Yeah, it all kind of just snowballs. Then you get to the point where you're like, okay, now I've completely finished my entire basement into a recording facility.

5:19 Luke F. Walton Yes.

5:21 Justin Kohler How do I make that work on a daily basis? So there's always a new challenge coming down the road. And we've started, you can see above me, I've got some speakers here that are for our current adventure of the Dolby Atmos immersive mixing.

5:37 Luke F. Walton Yes.

5:37 Justin Kohler So. That's another interesting challenge because things don't always work the way that you want them to.

5:44 Luke F. Walton Cool. Tell me a little bit about that. What are some of the challenges that you're running into? Because I've talked with some people about Dolby Atmos and kind of immersive audio and all that kind of stuff. I'm just curious on the ground, what's it look like?

5:55 Justin Kohler So kind of on the ground, you've got multiple speakers around you. You've got up to nine actually. I can't remember how many there. I think there's up to like 11 speakers total that kind of surround you.

6:06 Justin Kohler And various setups have various amounts of speakers, but ours will have nine, I believe, total when we're done. But it's just kind of challenge of, okay, do we have everything spaced correctly? Okay, it's not quite spaced correctly. Or the room that when the room was built, we weren't thinking of Atmos. So we're

6:26 Luke F. Walton Yep.

6:26 Justin Kohler kind of dealing with. And with those challenges, but a lot of it's hanging speakers and making sure that they're the right distance from your ear to the speaker and also from each wall and each other, each speaker.

6:41 Luke F. Walton Interesting. Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, I think Atmos is a 9.1.2 top system or whatever,

6:48 Justin Kohler it

6:48 Luke F. Walton and you can always scale down or whatever.

6:50 Justin Kohler right yeah it can be but you can build kind of the general setup is seven dot seven dot one dot four so that's kind of the the gen but like there's so many different it's kind of like uh like a surround sound but on steroids

7:08 Luke F. Walton steroids yeah

7:08 Justin Kohler and

7:09 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah that's

7:09 Justin Kohler um you can have multiple different configurations so it's

7:13 Luke F. Walton pretty cool

7:13 Justin Kohler kind of neat how that all kind of folds down into stereo

7:17 Luke F. Walton yeah absolutely and i find it i find it fascinating just to think about like how is this actually hitting you know the the studio world or the home studio world because like it's one thing to be like okay capital like wants to put in an Atmos system it's like whatever they hire the riggers and

7:32 Luke F. Walton and it's all like union labor and just to spec and it's done versus like hey i gotta hang up how am i gonna hang up a super heavy speaker above me and not have it crash down in an earthquake or something yeah

7:43 Justin Kohler we we actually thought that through quite a bit and we went with we tried to find the lightest speakers we could humanly possibly get and still have the atom speakers that we have hung those little guys they're only five inch five inch speaker cones i think and

7:58 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

7:59 Justin Kohler they're very they're very lightweight you can hang them with one hand actually

8:02 Luke F. Walton Cool.

8:02 Justin Kohler i i actually hung them with one i put one hand underneath the speaker while i ran the bolt through the mounting point

8:07 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

8:09 Justin Kohler because they have adjustable mounts for those right

8:11 Luke F. Walton that's really smart that's really cool um and that's a good point too i i don't know if everybody like thinks about it especially you put in a home theater system it's like kind of whatever but when you're doing professional music recording you don't want to have phasing going on between the speakers you want them to be hitting each ear at the right time there's like there's some math

8:27 Justin Kohler right

8:27 Luke F. Walton involved cool

8:29 Justin Kohler yeah and there's some software that can help with that but if you try to get it as humanly close as possible before you you dip into the

8:37 Luke F. Walton Mm

8:37 Justin Kohler The

8:37 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

8:37 Justin Kohler software side of things.

8:39 Luke F. Walton yeah that makes a lot of sense do you use stuff like sonar works or any of the kind of corrective software to sweet

8:45 Justin Kohler yes we do we actually uh i'm an affiliate for sonar works so yeah then we've got um the stereo version i bought that years before i became an affiliate i bought it and then it was like hey i really like this i wonder if i could be an affiliate for it and they're like yeah sure why not like there was zero process it was just like yeah sure give us your give us your information you can be an affiliate i was like

9:08 Justin Kohler awesome uh we have been dabbling they make a a surround version of their software that

9:15 Luke F. Walton Okay.

9:16 Justin Kohler we don't don't currently own but we've been uh we've been running trials of it to see how it works and it's it's really neat how it kind of adapts every speaker but it takes the multi-channel version takes forever and i can't put that in any more better terms it does feel like it takes forever because you have to analyze analyze each speaker individually yeah

9:38 Luke F. Walton interesting so how does how does sonar works just for somebody that might just like hearing us throw out there's software that makes your room sound better like how does like what exactly is entailed yeah

9:49 Justin Kohler well the great thing about their software is it walks you through every step like there's like do this and then now you can do this and it has readouts and stuff but basically you have a microphone that you hook into your recording interface or whatever you use to get audio into your to your computer and then it runs this

10:08 Justin Kohler nasty tone you don't really want to listen to the tone it runs for very long because it's not very beautiful but it measures the the distance of the speaker from the microphone to the speaker and then it somehow magically measures the distance from each speaker when it runs that tone and that's kind of what it does and then it it uh after you've measured you do that in multiple spots like it tells you stand here okay now take two feet and go over here

10:34 Justin Kohler Now go two feet the opposite direction, go over here, and you kind of just keep doing that as you go around the room. And it kind of just analyzes the room and sets EQ points for your speakers to make them sound the flattest they can sound. With the multi-channel one, it also adds an extra step into making sure every speaker, if it needs a little bit delay for some reason, it'll calculate that and add it in. So

11:02 Luke F. Walton Cool.

11:02 Justin Kohler everything arrives at the same time to your head.

11:05 Luke F. Walton Hey everybody, Scoobert Doobert here. I'm excited to announce my new record, I, as in the letter I, it is available on all streaming platforms now as well as on Bandcamp with high res.

11:16 Luke F. Walton dot wave files so usually you hear the compressed mp3s or thanks to the streaming services these dot wave files they sound the best they absolutely do it is science i'm actually going to be posting a blog article about why waves sound better than mp3s and that leads me to my next topic i started a blog and we are pressing vinyl so whoever is subscribed to the blog is going to get first dibs on the limited edition vinyls that we're talking like some super super limited edition i think they're only doing like

11:44 Luke F. Walton doing like 10 or 15 of the you know top shelf stuff and then there will be other really cool colorways as well but the whole vinyl run is not that big because i'm not that big you know hopefully someday we'll be able to press more but until then you gotta you gotta jump on it now so join the blog join that mailing list it's all free and then you'll be able to get first dibs on that vinyl of i as it's being pressed and on that blog we're also going to be doing stuff for like show notes

12:10 Luke F. Walton and other musical topics that require a little bit more visual component so for example i just did a pod not too long ago on musical notation throughout the history be kind of cool to see like what it actually looks like throughout history right and that's that's what the blog's here for it'll hit your emails just like every tuesday morning is kind of what we're looking at and it'll just be a nice extra little way to love music more expand the understanding from the podcast

12:36 Luke F. Walton And also hook you up with some exclusive perks like first dibs on vinyl records. So anyway, check out the new music. Hopefully subscribe to that sub stack. You'll find the link in my show notes or you could go to lovemusicmore.substack.com to sign up today and we'll send you some emails.

12:55 Luke F. Walton uh interesting thing just with audio in general you know the speed of light is super fast but the speed Right. of sound is not that fast really like i i think it's something like if if the drummer is you know 80 feet that way you guys might not be playing in time with each other anymore

13:09 Justin Kohler Right. Yeah, it's crazy. I actually read a thing about orchestras, how orchestras have that problem because there's an 80 person orchestra.

13:18 Luke F. Walton right

13:18 Justin Kohler So you're hearing the the cello that's across. The way, he's got 100 to 150 feet away from you, and you might be a violin that's playing third chair, you're hearing that at a separate time than your own instrument.

13:34 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

13:34 Justin Kohler So I've actually heard orchestras have problems with that because musicians are so far away from each other.

13:42 Luke F. Walton Yes. And that makes a lot of sense too why it's like, okay, we need a conductor. We need somebody to like dial this all in.

13:48 Justin Kohler Yeah, that's kind of what the conductor's doing. He's standing in the middle. He's hearing everything all at once, whereas the percussion's not even hearing what's happening at the front of the stage because they're in the back.

14:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah.

14:02 Justin Kohler So it's someone to keep it in time. And that's, I guess it's kind of what a music producer does in a sense too. They're kind of conducting. the recording, you

14:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah, for

14:12 Justin Kohler know, to an extent.

14:13 Luke F. Walton sure. I mean, music production is so fascinating because you can gum it up so quickly in that same way where it's like, okay, you added one too many reverbs or like this pre-delay, little off. Now the whole thing is kind of like swampy and weird. There's a fragility in music that I don't know if people fully like grasp just like how easy it is to break this thing in the production process.

14:39 Justin Kohler yeah it's it's really easy to break and it's it's also really easy like fix it too because it's like oh just do it again just do it again you know you'll be fine uh but some people especially if you're kind of new to the whole thing nerves kind of kick in and you're like i don't know if i can do it again yeah sure try it again if you can you can if not we'll we'll work with what we got

14:59 Luke F. Walton yeah that's actually a good question like bedside manner uh for recording engineers how have you developed that to like try to get the get the best you know performance out of the musician or whatever and make them feel safe if yeah if it's their first time recording or second time recording like hey like don't get too intimidated as i'm pointing this microphone like right at your head

15:19 Justin Kohler uh one being kind of having a home type environment even though it's we're kind of in a semi-professional space right now it's it's still very much homey there's there's stuff everywhere and um but uh creating that comfortable space is like the first step um and i've worked with a lot of engineers throughout that i don't know how long i can't even remember how long but

15:43 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

15:43 Justin Kohler uh through the years i've worked with other engineers and i've worked with guys who are very humble and just kind of like yeah just you know get comfortable to whatever and then i've worked with guys who are kind of steamrolling everything and kind of and those guys if you steamroll it it doesn't go well musicians get tense and they kind of just

16:03 Justin Kohler don't end up doing what you need them to do or even what they want to do um but i've also worked with engineers where you might want to you know like hey i want you to do this i have this sound in my head and

16:16 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

16:16 Justin Kohler the most successful things i've seen even in my own uh experiences is that if you just kind of let them do what they need to do or what they want to do what they've envisioned things just kind of go smoother it's like yeah okay that's cool now what if we added you know a cello to your your bass guitar track you know just to add an extra texture and they're like oh yeah that might be cool and we try it and it doesn't work then you just kind of delete it which is nice in today's age you can just

16:47 Justin Kohler just hit delete and everything's

16:48 Luke F. Walton It's gone.

16:49 Justin Kohler good yeah if it didn't work it didn't work but um yeah just kind of keeping your cool helps helps a lot

16:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

16:55 Justin Kohler not getting too frustrated or um most of the time bands get frustrated with themselves and they kind of take it out on the engineer a little bit and then that can also make your engineer a little a little grumpy or a little frustrated with what's going on so that's kind of it kind of goes both ways it's a give and take

17:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And it's funny too how a producer can come in and change the vibe. Like I did a recording session and It was probably my least favorite recording session I've ever done. Not because the band got into fights or whatever. I've been in those too. But the producer came in. It was a really good vibe. Everyone was all set up. Everyone was rehearsed and whatever.

17:38 Luke F. Walton The producer came in like a steamroll. Like, I am the best. Like, you're all lucky to have me energy. And then forced everyone to play the song on loop with no breaks like 50 times.

17:49 Luke F. Walton we all were basically injured by the end of the session because there was just this like feeling of like keep going keep going keep going no and then he didn't end up using then he he treated everything except for the drums of scratch track and so we all did 50 takes of something that he just threw away and it's just this weird thing of like one personality can really spoil the pot in a studio

18:11 Justin Kohler Absolutely.

18:11 Luke F. Walton environment it's amazing

18:13 Justin Kohler yeah it's amazing how one person can can completely just destroy the vibe of what's going on so and yeah i don't try to if i'm going to track something we're going to we're going to use it or we're going to try to use it and

18:26 Luke F. Walton Yes.

18:26 Justin Kohler i get it i get a lot of bands or even a lot of artists that are like why did we record that i don't want that i'm like oh you don't want that take it sounded great they're like no i want i want to do it i want to do it without my guitar i just wanted to record guitar but i'm not used to recording my guitar without without me singing so i was like wow you sang great you

18:43 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:44 Justin Kohler know you might as

18:46 Luke F. Walton Love

18:46 Justin Kohler well keep it so and then there's a few artists were like we did that and like that's great cool we're done hour hour later we're out the door so

18:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And it's it's there's a there's a really funny thing and I think it is a early like first recording.

19:01 Luke F. Walton my mentality of i'm gonna do it the traditional the real way the studio way do the drums and the bass and the guitar and like layer everything on top of each other and really focus super hard on my vocals um but especially if you're like a band and you play live you can lose the essential nature of like what makes you you like i i read about some some of the recording sessions that the pixies did and how they Right.

19:26 Luke F. Walton tried to keep things as live as humanly possible because they're a live live band and like you want to put the band on the recording and then you add stuff or you you can punch in or you can whatever but like at the core of it maybe just try and capture what you do you know

19:42 Luke F. Walton see if you like it and if you don't then just delete it do it the other way you know

19:46 Justin Kohler Right. And that's how most recordings were done prior to kind of the digital world when everything was on analog tape. It was like the Beatles did the same thing. They played live in the room and then

20:00 Luke F. Walton yeah

20:00 Justin Kohler that

20:00 Luke F. Walton then they

20:01 Justin Kohler did was

20:01 Luke F. Walton punch

20:01 Justin Kohler it.

20:01 Luke F. Walton -ins then they would they would you know do some overdubs if you want to and you know

20:06 Justin Kohler The majority of the track was done. on a console to tape and then that was that was the mix that was

20:12 Luke F. Walton Uh

20:12 Justin Kohler it we were done then we moved on to like okay we all maybe we need to add grand piano to that okay cool add grand piano to that you know maybe we need to add this but the majority of tracking along everybody that was kind of the way it was done you know or it was done with one microphone which was even crazier um if you think about how we do things today it's like really one microphone and we

20:35 Justin Kohler recorded the entire band so

20:37 Luke F. Walton yeah it's so cool because then like in those in those days the um recording engineers were like physicists like it's like okay how far does this have to be from the one microphone and yeah

20:51 Justin Kohler yeah it was crazy i'll wear lab coats and they looked like uh they looked like something out of like oppenheimer where everybody's like gonna nuke a bomb or something so right

21:01 Luke F. Walton It's why they call us engineers. The term stuck even though we lost the lab coats and maybe some of the skill.

21:10 Justin Kohler i i feel like some of the skill might still be there and some of the older guys but um i've tried to keep some of the skill alive in my my own own life just because owning a recording studio a lot of the time you're doing the the electrical or

21:26 Luke F. Walton Yes,

21:26 Justin Kohler whatever yourself and

21:27 Luke F. Walton the

21:28 Justin Kohler you kind

21:28 Luke F. Walton real.

21:28 Justin Kohler of know

21:30 Luke F. Walton it's like this

21:30 Justin Kohler Yeah,

21:30 Luke F. Walton is engineering right here

21:31 Justin Kohler yeah, you got to make sure you don't electrocute yourself or blow up like I got to replace the tube in this guitar amp I probably should make sure I don't blow the amp up

21:40 Luke F. Walton that's always scared me have you done have you i've i've done i haven't like i i just don't touch amps that much i'll chain i'll do tubes um but like the power stuff in the amplifier scares the crap out of me any

21:55 Justin Kohler Yeah, I

21:56 Luke F. Walton tips

21:56 Justin Kohler do most I do most of my own electrical work and

21:59 Luke F. Walton Any tips

21:59 Justin Kohler it's,

22:00 Luke F. Walton any tips

22:00 Justin Kohler yeah.

22:01 Luke F. Walton on resources or like ways to learn that because it seems like there's there's a learning curve but you don't want to screw up

22:07 Justin Kohler well yeah the first the first ones always make sure it's unplugged because i've learned

22:10 Luke F. Walton Yes.

22:10 Justin Kohler that's the bad way um there's not a not a good way to learn how to unplug something before you start diving into it um but always always take pictures like take a before picture before you start unsoldering cables and stuff because i've done that where i'm like okay now where do these two cables come from and i

22:31 Luke F. Walton have Exactly.

22:31 Justin Kohler nothing to resource because they're old vintage amps and no one wrote anything down so or it's an amp i bought used and it didn't come with any documentation and there's not much on the internet saying this is how this amp specific amp is wired or anything um but i've done that i had a console that i had in the studio here for mixing and it was from 1950s it

22:55 Luke F. Walton Cool.

22:56 Justin Kohler was cool it was massive it was like eight channels but it was huge um and that one i had to rewire it when i bought it and that was a fun experience

23:06 Luke F. Walton Yes, definitely. I mean. That's the real engineering. In terms of music scene and finding bands, so you're along the front range, right? Yep. Kind of near Fort Collins and stuff. I know there's a ton of music in Fort Collins and Denver. How do you find people to record? How do you kind of integrate yourself into the music scene?

23:27 Justin Kohler uh i go to quite a bit of shows um

23:29 Luke F. Walton Cool.

23:30 Justin Kohler when i when i can i was supposed to go see a show this week this past weekend and i got i got kind of sick so i ended up not going so i should probably i probably could have gone and been okay but i was just like yeah i don't want to i don't want to chance it by any means so

23:46 Luke F. Walton For sure.

23:46 Justin Kohler um there's quite a bit of live venues around here and that is one one thing i do myself is is i uh i do live sound reinforcement for for

23:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

23:56 Justin Kohler bands i provide them the pas and stuff so um

23:59 Luke F. Walton Sweet.

23:59 Justin Kohler but a lot of the bands that i meet are usually in casual passing it's not even like at a show i'll go to a we've got a ton of breweries

24:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

24:09 Justin Kohler here probably

24:09 Luke F. Walton you do.

24:09 Justin Kohler more

24:10 Luke F. Walton Get some good breweries up there.

24:11 Justin Kohler probably more than any any state in

24:14 Luke F. Walton definitely per

24:14 Justin Kohler in capita the nation oh

24:15 Luke F. Walton in terms of your population y'all uh

24:17 Justin Kohler yeah

24:17 Luke F. Walton swing way heavier than you're yeah

24:19 Justin Kohler i i feel like i feel like i feel like we have breweries like some places have starbucks um

24:24 Luke F. Walton totally it's so true

24:25 Justin Kohler there's

24:25 Luke F. Walton it's

24:25 Justin Kohler one on

24:26 Luke F. Walton so true

24:26 Justin Kohler every corner um but uh sometimes i'll go hang out a brew with some some buddies and and we'll i'll be talking to somebody while we're waiting for drinks and it comes to find out they're in a band and then

24:38 Luke F. Walton Cool.

24:38 Justin Kohler they need somewhere to record or they need someone to give them live sound and sometimes i'll give someone live sound and then later on down the road they're like hey we know you do live sound but by chance do you happen to do any recording and i

24:52 Luke F. Walton Mm

24:53 Justin Kohler say yes i do a lot of recording and then they come in and they they record a track a single or a couple couple singles maybe you know to kind of throw out there this time of the year we start getting a lot of bands coming in to do kind of like demos for venues to hear for

25:12 Luke F. Walton Yes.

25:12 Justin Kohler us it's not really a demo like we produce it like a full-on on track but they want it basically just so they can uh go and give it to venues to hear um what they sound like especially when they're trying to get new venues that haven't heard them before or

25:29 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

25:29 Justin Kohler they're a very new band so

25:30 Luke F. Walton Yeah

25:31 Justin Kohler um i get quite a bit of that this time of the year which is fun because they you know we give them like the full track and then we kind of give them 30 and 60 second snippets because some venues don't have time to listen to a full track it's like They just want to hear the best 30 or 60 seconds.

25:48 Luke F. Walton Interesting. And do you do any of the, I know there's like some festivals and stuff out there. I know that Fort Collins has a big one. Do you do any of the sound reinforcement for any of the festivals around?

25:59 Justin Kohler uh sometimes uh just depends on the year i have uh we definitely go to the festival we'll go it's a two we have a two-day one that comes up pretty quickly here i believe in april and

26:10 Luke F. Walton I'm meaning to go. I got one of my best friends bought a place in Fort Collins. So I really want to go to that festival.

26:16 Justin Kohler it's it's a kick it's like every every venue bar outside stage that exists in fort collins is loaded with music for like two days

26:25 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

26:25 Justin Kohler um it's a blast uh and we'll go to that and just kind of hit up bands that we like or and we have i have friends who play in bands too that helps too because they'll be like hey we played with this other band last week and they need someone to help them out with their stuff so

26:42 Luke F. Walton cool yeah i love that and then in terms of um the recordings that you do do you feel like um you kind of keep those relationships with those bands so like you'll do the singles or whatever and then they'll come back for an album later is that is that kind of how it usually panned

26:56 Justin Kohler it

26:56 Luke F. Walton out or

26:56 Justin Kohler used to be that way um nowadays with the spot with spotify and all the streaming services that are out there um bands are kind of they're doing this

27:07 Justin Kohler a bunch of singles at a time and then like at the end of the year releasing at least in my experience releasing an album off all the singles they created throughout the year so

27:18 Luke F. Walton do you think that the like because i i kind of do that too but it's i don't i really try not to think of it as a compilation of singles i try to like make an album with strong enough songs that i can release them one by one um do you think that like the art of making a collection is going away or like how do you think that's going?

27:41 Justin Kohler I think it will never completely go away just because there are people out there that want to listen. in a a full sense they want to hear everything that's

27:52 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

27:52 Justin Kohler going on in an album i still like to sit down from time to time and put on a vinyl record and and listen to the whole thing because vinyl's kind of making a comeback uh little by little but uh it's i know record labels like it because people can't steal it as easily

28:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:07 Justin Kohler as they can an mp3 uh but there's a lot of that's kind of coming back and i do like to sometimes in the afternoon just put on an album and just sit back and relax and listen to it all the way through um but i do think with with streaming as it's kind of becoming more and more evident to do streaming uh singles are kind of the way to go because you can release

28:28 Justin Kohler you could basically release a song every other month you know um and then do a full-on like album release later or um as long as when you're doing all that you're kind of thinking of as a collective as like okay these all these songs are gonna equal one and i've worked with bands where we did that and then three of the singles they released ended up not on that album because they didn't mix well

28:55 Luke F. Walton I think that's smart. And I think that's a great way to do it. I mean, Beatles did it, you know, not necessarily the same intention. They were trying to do singles so people buy the singles and albums so people buy the albums.

29:03 Justin Kohler Yep.

29:03 Luke F. Walton But like, I think the idea of like, hey, this single was from this album cycle, but isn't necessarily on the album is a good idea, like a good idea for the strength of the collection. Yeah. Do you approach things differently if you know, like say, for example, you have a band, they've done two or three songs and they're going, hey, I actually want to do like a 10 song record. I want to include these three songs.

29:25 Luke F. Walton Do you start recording things a certain way to kind of keep it within like a sonic palette or do you approach each song as kind of what that individual song is looking for?

29:35 Justin Kohler Um, I don't... On a whole, it's kind of everything is approached as the same, like there's not really like we're going to record this differently than we recorded this other song, but we are going to record.

29:50 Justin Kohler you know we might have less tracks in one song because there's no toms or something or they

29:54 Luke F. Walton Right.

29:55 Justin Kohler didn't they wanted that last song to just be acoustic you

29:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

29:58 Justin Kohler know uh

29:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

29:59 Justin Kohler we'll do stuff like that but when it comes to technique of recording everything else it's all done exactly the same the sonic palette's all the same we use all the same microphones um i have i have a drum kit that lives here in the studio that i try to have have bands use all the time just because it's it's always tuned up the heads are always changed they

30:19 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

30:19 Justin Kohler might bring in their own cymbals they might bring in their own snare but on the kind of whole there's enough stuff around me and around here that they can just kind of plug in and get good tones and and kind of go from there

30:34 Luke F. Walton Toms are so crazy. there's so because you can have a tom that's like the drummer likes and it sounds good and you put it on microphone just like or you have a house kit and it's like no no these toms work like trust me these are good

30:49 Justin Kohler They sound great, yeah.

30:50 Luke F. Walton yeah sometimes even like mismatched toms like this toms from this drum kit that toms from that drum kit is like oh that's the thing it needed but um they're i think that they're one of the hardest things to record in the world

31:01 Justin Kohler they can be but

31:03 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

31:03 Justin Kohler i also kind of find like we recorded a track it's probably been a month ago but the guy was like hey can you mind if i detune this this floor tom like i just want it lower than what it is now i'm like it's it's already kind of pretty low but sure and he hit it and it just sounded kind of like paper like he hit it and i was like that sounds awful that sounds awful in the room here and then we recorded it and i'm like

31:27 Justin Kohler like that sounds fantastic Yes. like i what is going on here i don't understand the physics behind why this microphone is picking up this the way it is but in the room it sounds terrible you think in the room the microphone would just pick up the way it sounds in the room and it doesn't always do that

31:45 Luke F. Walton and I mean it's it that can go to everything I mean that like one of the things that I thought helped me to become a better vocalist is understanding like mic technique and then also putting my dang headphones on because I would always you know I'd be the vocalist like this I want to hear myself or whatever it's like

32:03 Luke F. Walton the microphone's picking you up in a certain way you want to change the way you're singing slightly to highlight the microphone the preamps and all that kind of stuff like you're supposed to be part of that instrument rather

32:12 Justin Kohler Right.

32:12 Luke F. Walton than just like oh the microphone's just an ear that you're throwing there it's like no there's a lot of color there's a lot of stuff going on proximity effect like how close you are gets bassier than the farther away it gets more room like all those little little things they add up in a big big way

32:27 Justin Kohler absolutely they do and everything that we use you know all the equipment the drums the microphones the preamps those are all just they're instruments in themselves that

32:35 Luke F. Walton Mm

32:35 Justin Kohler kind

32:36 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

32:36 Justin Kohler of help facilitate what you're what's in your head that's

32:40 Luke F. Walton I like

32:40 Justin Kohler that's all it. basically is doing i've got lots of analog equipment i've got some that sits in front of me here some that sits behind me along with drums and mics and stuff and they all just do different things and i've had people ask me like well what why did you pull that microphone out i'm like

32:54 Justin Kohler You know, it's because I like that way it sounds when people sing into it or I like it when it does this certain thing and it's just a it's just a sonic tool like paintbrush essentially.

33:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah. I like that. And I like that kind of mentality because a lot of people just go like, oh, I need to copy so-and-so's vocal chain or like I need to get the most expensive microphone so that I can put that on everything where instead

33:20 Justin Kohler Right.

33:20 Luke F. Walton viewing it like a color, a palette, a part of your instrument, then you know then it's easier to be like situational about like when you pull those things rather than just being like I use this on everything. Yeah.

33:32 Justin Kohler And I've had weird microphones.

33:35 Luke F. Walton Yes.

33:35 Justin Kohler yeah stuff that they're supposed to do like specific things and i hardly ever use them it's

33:39 Luke F. Walton Cool.

33:39 Justin Kohler always the stuff that's like this is a sonic thing and i like the what it does to everything that it's on which is kind of you get kind of the generic stuff in that way but it's always kind of nice to have some of the odd stuff it's like having paint you have your yellow your green your blue but then you also have like turquoise like

33:58 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

33:58 Justin Kohler what do you use turquoise for i don't know but it could be fun for something you

34:02 Luke F. Walton Yes.

34:03 Justin Kohler know

34:03 Luke F. Walton Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast, but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars, share it with your friends. This is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow. So if you want to do this, you go into the podcast.

34:19 Luke F. Walton a screen right you click on the dot dot dot on spotify under there it says rate show and you go and you click it five stars if you could do that for me that's the best way for the algorithms all that stuff to share it out with the world i know that it's a lot to ask but if you could please please please just please just hit those three dots and a five star it would really help us out and helps us you know get the get the word out and spread the love of music so thank you if you're listening on youtube you know what to do like subscribe all that good stuff

34:45 Luke F. Walton Thank you so much. And here's the rest of the episode. In terms of integrating new gear, like do you kind of like go, oh, I need this because I have a gap here or am I into a situation where I needed a more colorful preamp or something? How do you budget and plan like the next thing that you want to buy or the next acquisition to grow that cabinet?

35:06 Justin Kohler right some of it is um i'm a huge warm audio fan all

35:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

35:11 Justin Kohler their all their equipment so sometimes they'll come out with something and i was like that's exactly what i've been looking for they came out with their wa1b compressor last year and it was one of those things like i've always wanted one and i like the way they sound and the data vocals and because they're they're tube driven everything is tube inside them uh so i was like i really like what they do to vocals but i've all i've all

35:35 Justin Kohler i've only ever been able to use the plug-in um in my own studio i've worked in other studios that have had the real uh cl1b compressors and stuff like that and i was like man i really wish someone would make one of those and

35:46 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

35:46 Justin Kohler they came out with one and i literally called sweetwater the day they announced i was like hey i want to order one right now they're like cool we have like three in stock we'll send it to you right now um so there's there's moments like that um sometimes like Pretty much a lot of my sonic palette here is transformer-based,

36:06 Luke F. Walton Okay.

36:06 Justin Kohler lots of big transformers because that kind of colors the sound differently than, say, a tube or just your generic solid-state stuff. And a lot of the vintage stuff that we love, that we hear, a lot of it's that transformer that's in them.

36:21 Luke F. Walton So say, say for example, if somebody doesn't know what. Those words mean transformer versus tube versus solid state.

36:28 Justin Kohler right so vacuum tube is essentially it's a glass light bulb that's essentially what it is it's got a filament and it's glass and there's air pressure inside it and as it kind of heats up it changes tonality um which is why you always want to leave your tube stuff on at least you know 10 to 15 minutes before you start doing anything because it allows them to warm up and they do have like a

36:52 Justin Kohler it's kind of funny with tube gears you have a like a peak of where they they're perfect and then

36:57 Luke F. Walton Right.

36:57 Justin Kohler they either will wane or they'll just kind of stay there it

37:00 Luke F. Walton Okay.

37:00 Justin Kohler just depends on on

37:01 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:01 Justin Kohler the equipment and how old it is a transformer basically is doing exactly that it's transforming a certain type of voltage into another type of voltage

37:12 Justin Kohler and it will color the sound a little bit depending on their size and what they're what kind of metal they're made out of and

37:19 Luke F. Walton Mm

37:19 Justin Kohler there's

37:19 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

37:20 Justin Kohler magnets in them there's a lot more that goes into a transformer and i haven't even delved

37:25 Luke F. Walton That's good.

37:25 Justin Kohler into the science of that myself

37:26 Luke F. Walton Great overview. Yeah.

37:27 Justin Kohler um and then you know everything else that we have is basically a solid state that we have it's like our phones and our you know kind of that technology

37:37 Luke F. Walton Yeah, that's a great overview. Thank you for that. And I think that it's interesting too, because, you know, what's it called? True Iron. I don't know if you've seen the Kazrog plugin, but it's like a transformer. It's basically all it does is it's supposed to give you more of the sound of transformers. Yeah.

37:51 Justin Kohler Yep. Yeah, and I've got everything I've got's got transformers in it.

37:54 Luke F. Walton Yep.

37:54 Justin Kohler Every piece of, even my microphones have transformers in them.

37:58 Luke F. Walton Sweet.

37:58 Justin Kohler So it's.

37:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

38:00 Justin Kohler I like that sound and I think it does kind of take away the sterility that, you know, our DAWs can have our recording software. They can they can kind of give you this like bass sound. But what we what we love and what we miss is that that transformer, that analog type of and there's plug ins that do it pretty well nowadays. There was a point in time where that wasn't the case.

38:24 Luke F. Walton Yes. No, totally. Yeah, it's gotten better and better. the the craziest thing though is you know a lot of times in in adulto you will reach for something to be like saturate it but in

38:35 Justin Kohler Yeah,

38:35 Luke F. Walton normal like what you're doing you're saturating it at every stage it's a multi you're not like throwing on a whole bunch of saturation necessarily you can but um it's like it's additive you have all these little things that are adding additional types of saturation to create this nice warm final product

38:53 Justin Kohler right yeah

38:53 Luke F. Walton it's

38:54 Justin Kohler no and i've got a i've

38:54 Luke F. Walton that way go

38:55 Justin Kohler got super clean uh super clean

38:56 Luke F. Walton yeah

38:57 Justin Kohler preamps so i can i can take away the saturation if i want but we just like when we do hip-hop tracks here it's like they want things super clean that's that's the style of hip-hop so we'll take some of that away we could just press a button and it goes away um but a lot of times like if i'm doing drums i want all sorts of crazy saturation on drums i want guitars that guitars are saturation that's essentially your overdrive

39:22 Justin Kohler drive um

39:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

39:23 Justin Kohler they they are saturated from the amplifier to your from your fingers to to the speakers that there's some form of

39:31 Justin Kohler harmonic or distortion that's in there that's that's kind of giving you that that feel oh

39:36 Luke F. Walton that's what made it so hard for me to play line-in guitar for the longest time just you know like no amp just hey just plug right into the box and you know not even having amps them or anything like that was so so difficult for me for the longest time because i just it felt like it wasn't the same instrument because there was no there's nothing going on

39:54 Justin Kohler i absolutely agree i play a fender under tele telecaster

39:57 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

39:58 Justin Kohler and it's uh you play it straight in for me it feels it feels bad it

40:03 Luke F. Walton It doesn't does.

40:04 Justin Kohler doesn't

40:04 Luke F. Walton It feels bad.

40:05 Justin Kohler feel good it just doesn't feel good at all but if you you plug it into an amplifier even if the amplifier is clean it still is like oh that's better or

40:13 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yes.

40:14 Justin Kohler or i or i plug it into like you know something like quad cortex the an amp a modeler of some kind it's like oh that's it's still it's still not it's still not the amplifier but it's it's better than just plugging into a direct box and and going clean um although

40:31 Luke F. Walton yeah

40:31 Justin Kohler the interface that i use does have uh transformer-based uh

40:36 Luke F. Walton cool

40:36 Justin Kohler inputs for

40:36 Luke F. Walton okay

40:36 Justin Kohler for guitars which is really cool and you can just plug straight into the end and it does help a little bit but you're still kind of like

40:44 Justin Kohler I still don't feel like like it's playing through something like an amplifier or an effects box and then going in.

40:52 Luke F. Walton Yes, yes. And it changes your performance too.

40:55 Justin Kohler Oh, absolutely.

40:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I've come to like it in its own bizarre way, but it's only for certain things, especially if I then like run it through a cassette tape emulation or something like that or sketch cassette, then it then it gives it this kind of like weird thin.

41:10 Luke F. Walton but can poke out of a mix in like a very vocal warbly lo-fi way i like that but um it takes out a different performance you don't feel that like connection with the instrument uh without the amplifier i don't know what it is oh

41:23 Justin Kohler yeah yeah absolutely and there's times where we'll record them in and then re-amp later and

41:27 Luke F. Walton for sure totally

41:28 Justin Kohler that that helps that's like okay if i know i'm doing that then i can kind of get around it

41:31 Luke F. Walton actually

41:32 Justin Kohler and

41:32 Luke F. Walton can you explain re-amping that would that's a really interesting concept

41:36 Justin Kohler Absolutely. It's something that I've been playing with over the last probably decade just because I've never found a super good way to do it.

41:43 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

41:44 Justin Kohler But the current way that I've got it set up is I've got an interface that has a it's an Orion by Antelope and it's got a certain set of outputs that are just for ramping and basically we're taking your guitar signal out of the out of the computer.

42:00 Justin Kohler running it in through an amplifier or a distortion pedal or something along those lines and then dumping it back in with either picking it back up with a microphone or some kind of line-in device just to kind of get what an amplifier would sound like without basically messing with the original signal.

42:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah. It's such a weird feeling as a guitarist, too, to hear your playing get reamped. Like the ghost version of yourself playing through

42:32 Justin Kohler Right.

42:32 Luke F. Walton an amp is bizarre.

42:33 Justin Kohler Yeah, I generally try not to do it if I have people here because it's kind of bizarre for them the first couple times they're like, I don't like the way I sound. I'm like, well, you have to give it a couple minutes because I need to dial the amplifier in for what you're doing, you know.

42:51 Justin Kohler so and then there's times where we just you know we're in a hurry and we'll throw some kind of amp

42:55 Luke F. Walton yeah sure

42:56 Justin Kohler simulator from whoever there's so many great ones out there just kind of pick one and go with it oh

43:02 Luke F. Walton yeah totally it's all you know genre dependent and vibe dependent and time dependent but yeah reamping is really cool especially with all what guitar pedals can do now i mean yeah

43:12 Justin Kohler absolutely

43:13 Luke F. Walton it's it's so cool to be able to think of a guitar pedal basically as an outboard piece of gear yes

43:19 Justin Kohler we've i've always kind of used guitar pedals as outboard gear because i've always wanted a ton of outboard gear and

43:25 Luke F. Walton super

43:25 Justin Kohler outboard gear is really expensive um

43:27 Luke F. Walton expensive guitar pedals

43:29 Justin Kohler but

43:29 Luke F. Walton not

43:29 Justin Kohler guitar yeah

43:30 Luke F. Walton not too expensive yeah

43:30 Justin Kohler a couple hundred bucks and i've got i've got a really cool overdrive or i got a really cool reverb or um the reverbs i used for the longest time were essentially just guitar pedals

43:43 Luke F. Walton yeah awesome

43:43 Justin Kohler um and we'd run we'd essentially re-amp vocals that way we'd send vocals out re-amp them and throw them through all various things and kind of blend it back in no

43:53 Luke F. Walton that's so cool i mean and there's no rules you can do that you don't need to grab a vst like a super sterile whatever algorithmic reverb it's like hey you know we've got this weird spring reverb in this amp why don't we run the vocal in there see what happens

44:08 Justin Kohler right and there's times where we've we've ran even like take a speaker and go put it out in the garage and

44:13 Luke F. Walton Oh,

44:14 Justin Kohler redo it

44:14 Luke F. Walton cool.

44:15 Justin Kohler that way and kind of play with it but sometimes you're you've got a little bit of time restraint so you can't quite do that but It's

44:25 Luke F. Walton Well, I love

44:25 Justin Kohler interesting.

44:25 Luke F. Walton the adventure of it, you know, when you can, or at least in pockets, to add that little element of like, let's try something we've never done before or yeah, let's use a garage as an echo chamber. It's like that adds a certain energy to the whole process that I think can be infectious.

44:41 Luke F. Walton So like you're playing the part and then you're thinking about like, oh, what could we do next? How could we, I think that kind of experimental nature is what gets you, you know. revolver or um you know rubber

44:54 Justin Kohler something something

44:54 Luke F. Walton soul you

44:55 Justin Kohler weird yeah

44:55 Luke F. Walton know yeah okay

44:56 Justin Kohler i did i did some vocals here a couple weeks ago and we have a set of stairs that you walk down from the kitchen down to the basement where the studio is and it's a little corridor that you walk down and there's a landing and then you turn into the studio and we had a vocalist who decided he wanted to shut that door and record in that hallway his his vocal and i was like i don't know how well that's going to sound it is kind of treated

45:20 Justin Kohler treated we've

45:20 Luke F. Walton Huh?

45:21 Justin Kohler got some sound panels kind of to dampen the the the stairwell but it was fantastic it was like some some of the best things i've heard but we we took and we put a mic on him and then we put one at the top of the stairs so it was kind of that that almost he's singing direct and that's picking him up singing far away

45:43 Luke F. Walton hmm oh

45:44 Justin Kohler it was really interesting which is essentially what reverb does it kind of gives you that 3d effect no

45:49 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah for sure and it's in your actual space so it's like nobody else has that reverb just nobody has that reverb yeah

45:56 Justin Kohler yeah there's there's things like that that people can do even in their own homes like yeah go microwave bathroom you

46:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

46:01 Justin Kohler know or or put a mic in your i've put mics in ovens before you

46:05 Luke F. Walton Cool.

46:05 Justin Kohler can't just open

46:06 Luke F. Walton Not

46:06 Justin Kohler up just

46:06 Luke F. Walton that

46:06 Justin Kohler open

46:06 Luke F. Walton way.

46:07 Justin Kohler up the oven just

46:07 Luke F. Walton Yes.

46:08 Justin Kohler open up an oven put the mic in it and see what it sounds like it's either going to sound really cool or really bad there's no in between there but

46:15 Luke F. Walton Yes. No in between.

46:17 Justin Kohler yeah not with the oven it's it's a big metal box so it could work really well or it could not work at all it's just It just depends, but you just got to try things. You got to kind of poke the space and see what comes back at you.

46:30 Luke F. Walton I like that. And then that ends up creating the sonic signature of your space. Like that's, it's part of your bag of tricks. It's something that just like your drum kit can become part of the region's sound. So if enough bands come through your space and they track in these certain ways, now it becomes like, oh yeah, stuff that comes from the front range, it kind of has this thing. I don't know.

46:49 Luke F. Walton quite what it is but like i gotta go out there and record with some of these bands and they find out oh it's because this recording engineer built a really cool space and he's using it to the fullest potential

47:00 Justin Kohler yeah that's that's kind of the way it was back in the you know when studios kind of started becoming big you've got Marshall Schultz and Abbey Road they all had a sound even the stuff in LA had had a sound and today we've kind of gotten away from that a little bit but it could come back around you know and who knows it all kind of comes it's all cyclical it all comes back around as long as you know disco doesn't kind of come back but

47:28 Justin Kohler uh you know all these genres kind of keep coming back and around and i hear i'll be listening to a song on the radio and i'll hear they sampled some song from like the 80s i was like am i listening to that song or am i listening to something different because then they'll like yeah they'll do some kind of hip-hop thing over it

47:44 Luke F. Walton and yeah

47:44 Justin Kohler i was like oh okay that is not what i thought that was but

47:49 Luke F. Walton Well, I mean, there's a I think that I think that the styles are also connected to the types of musicians. So,

47:58 Justin Kohler Mm

47:58 Luke F. Walton for example,

47:59 Justin Kohler hmm.

47:59 Luke F. Walton like a solo artist, I think lends itself a little bit more to those drier, I don't know where I am kind of sounds in most respects and then bands are kind of the exact opposite. Like I want to hear the band, I want to hear the individuals and their quirks and their imperfections and just like who they are.

48:18 Luke F. Walton And versus like studio musicians it's like no you're framing the vocalist like let the vocalist be super loud and everyone kind of be back here but filling in the foundation and then the band is like i want to hear every every personality and i think that Right.

48:31 Luke F. Walton in a band sense having a distinctive personality of the space um is almost a must because you have to meet the personality with personality otherwise it just feels flat

48:41 Justin Kohler Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you got it. You kind of fit everything together.

48:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

48:44 Justin Kohler Otherwise, it doesn't it doesn't work. It sounds odd or off or,

48:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

48:48 Justin Kohler you know, whatever you might hear is just doesn't work.

48:52 Luke F. Walton Yeah. It loses some of that chemistry. And I like it. It's just like everybody is trying to bring their best artistic self having the engineer doing that as well. It's not only the right thing to do, but it's also fun. It makes your job entertaining. Bane again.

49:07 Justin Kohler well the engineer's always kind of been the the unofficial member of the band uh

49:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah, totally.

49:14 Justin Kohler he's always and it's been that it's even more so with live live sound than with recording but uh live sound i've always all the bands i work with they always treat me like i'm one of the one of the band members they they put me on their bar tab they you know or whatever they've got for food and um yeah they just even though they're paying me to do you

49:34 Justin Kohler work for them but uh even in the studio it's it's kind of like oh yeah that he's just the the unsung guy that nobody nobody's gonna really know because unless you know they become famous or something but we've got local radio here like college radio and i'll hear bands on that that are that are new i'm like i wonder who did that like where did they do that at or or did they do it in their basement on their own or did they have an engineer did and it's it's kind of just uh

50:03 Justin Kohler Kind of a fun adventure to kind of go down to figure out who did what and where and how.

50:11 Luke F. Walton Love that. Before I get to the last question, I want to ask you, is there anything that you'd like to talk about like your YouTube channel or anything else that you're working on?

50:23 Justin Kohler um our youtube channel is an ongoing thing i can talk about that a little bit um it's it kind of sprawled out of pre-covid like we kind of started it and then covid hit and then i kind of quit um because we got so busy with bands because nobody could go anywhere so everybody was recording and recording

50:42 Luke F. Walton Recording

50:42 Justin Kohler recording and recording it's like every day there's a different band coming through um i was like this would be great could we just keep this going but it didn't unfortunately um which is kind of nice because it gives you breathing room if you have time for that uh but the youtube channel kind of was one of those things like well maybe i'll start you know talking about music and then i thought well

51:05 Justin Kohler i talk about music but who's gonna watch it and i was like well i can sprinkle in some some gear reviews and stuff like that throughout

51:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

51:12 Justin Kohler the years

51:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

51:13 Justin Kohler and um last year we we were sitting down i was talking with my myself and i've got a an engineer that kind of works with me here a little bit and i was talking about youtube and i was like what should i what should i do to kind of get the youtube like off the ground a little bit better and he's like well why don't you just do a video a week

51:30 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

51:30 Justin Kohler like every week just release a video i'm like that's a lot of work he's like yeah but what else are you gonna do i'm like that's a good point um i can't argue that point i really can't there's like what else you're gonna do i'm like i don't know i'll figure it out um so we kind of started doing a lot of gear reviews a lot of like just music rants like kind of just hey this is you

51:54 Justin Kohler where i think this thing's going or this is what i've experienced or

51:58 Luke F. Walton Mm

51:58 Justin Kohler i had a bad experience at guitar center today you know kind of talk about that a little bit and we just kind of kept going and it keeps it keeps going it's kind of like like what we're doing here is just but I'm sitting and I'm not talking to another person I'm talking to a camera and other people are watching it however we have started to get into like some local studio tours our

52:19 Luke F. Walton cool cool

52:20 Justin Kohler first

52:20 Luke F. Walton cool

52:20 Justin Kohler one dropped yesterday I believe where

52:23 Luke F. Walton i think

52:23 Justin Kohler we

52:23 Luke F. Walton i saw

52:24 Justin Kohler went

52:24 Luke F. Walton that video

52:24 Justin Kohler to

52:24 Luke F. Walton come through yeah i'll watch it i'm sure yeah

52:26 Justin Kohler yeah it's our longest video to date it's like an hour long I didn't realize how long it was until I finished it I was like huh that's longer than I thought it was going to be I thought it was going to be like like half an hour tops is

52:38 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

52:38 Justin Kohler like an hour long it's like oh well that's the first of of those so uh

52:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah, those watchers.

52:43 Justin Kohler we're trying to do trying to do more yeah definitely trying to do more of the uh the local studio tours like that around here people who who are doing some cool stuff that maybe go and talk to them and i like doing them because i get an idea about like oh hey i should totally do do that like

52:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

52:59 Justin Kohler that's not what i'm doing but that's what i should totally be doing um And I've done that watching like people's tours that are on YouTube, but

53:06 Luke F. Walton Mm

53:07 Justin Kohler going

53:07 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

53:07 Justin Kohler and meeting people, it's fun. And, and sometimes you go and you meet someone and they, they end up like, Oh, Hey, I've got like six bands I need to record and I don't have time to do all six. Could you take four, you know, or three or something like that?

53:21 Justin Kohler Um, sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't, but it's always fun and it's always encouraging to meet other people who are doing kind of the same thing that you're doing.

53:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

53:31 Justin Kohler so you don't because the whole music sometimes can just it can get a little lonely you

53:36 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

53:37 Justin Kohler know even if you're just you know you're making your own music you're not recording a studio or anything you're just making your own music and it's like it's a little lonely like

53:45 Luke F. Walton Right.

53:46 Justin Kohler i don't have anybody to bounce stuff off of or i don't you know i don't feel like anybody's doing what i'm doing so

53:54 Luke F. Walton I very much feel that.

53:56 Justin Kohler yeah i i feel that way every other week and then i and then i end up meeting somebody's like oh yeah i do exactly that same thing like really um with the exception of the Atmos stuff it's like i still kind of feel like i'm a little bit out there um but you know even you're making music there's always going to be times where you're you're by yourself or you're you're the only one doing that one thing because

54:21 Justin Kohler You don't realize that you're kind of a trailblazer.

54:24 Luke F. Walton Yep, totally. I mean, the road less traveled kind of thing. And also, I feel like all creative pursuits require a very large chunk of solitude, like creative focus, even like no matter what you're doing, even if it's a very collaborative thing, like making a movie, I think that like a director needs the time or a writer needs the time to just like be.

54:47 Luke F. Walton be alone with the work so that when they go to the next collaborative meeting or whatever they have something to add to it they've wrapped their head around it i think that people that don't maybe don't engage as much in like creative or in editing or whatever don't realize just just how much time you spend either staring at a computer or staring at the stars and like thinking of what's next

55:12 Justin Kohler Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's why, why am I alone all the time? Oh, it's because I'm mixing, I'm mixing this, this, this album or something. But,

55:21 Luke F. Walton No albums,

55:21 Justin Kohler but the nice

55:22 Luke F. Walton yeah.

55:22 Justin Kohler thing is, yeah, like if you're doing an album, you're gonna spend a lot of time by yourself. However, you know, if you can find people that are kind of like minded, like, like you are, you can kind of bounce ideas off of them. Or I've even thought in

55:39 Justin Kohler in this coming year doing some kind of like coffee hour at one of the local coffee bars and just like hey let's all meet and talk audio or maybe

55:47 Luke F. Walton Love it.

55:47 Justin Kohler not talk audio you know there's

55:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

55:49 Justin Kohler other things we can talk about too but just kind of gets like-minded people in the same room and they don't feel quite so alone or or quite so singled out

55:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah. I really like that. I think that that community music scene kind of vibe is lacking and needed and will result in better music.

56:09 Justin Kohler Oh, absolutely it will. The better music you can get, the better everything else will be. um along the way because you'll find out oh i'm making this music and then he's like oh yeah i do that exact same thing and then you guys end up collaborating and you get something even even better out of it than what you originally started out with right

56:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah. Music is a conversation, even though a lot of it's lonely. Yeah, at its core is a collaborative art. So I want to ask you the final question that I usually ask every guest. So the show is called Love Music More. And this segment is called Love Music Why. This is just an opportunity for you to talk about why you wake up every morning and choose to do this again. What keeps you coming back?

56:51 Luke F. Walton Why do you love it? Why do you sacrifice for it? Why do you love music?

56:57 Justin Kohler Um, for me, I'm, I'm an artist at heart. I was actually a muralist at one point, um, painting murals and stuff. I've always loved creating things and, and, you know, painting or clay or anything. And, and music is kind of my current form of, of artwork. It's, it's okay.

57:18 Justin Kohler This is how I make a painting. I'm taking the drum kit and I'm making some kind of sonic palette out of that.

57:25 Justin Kohler and i'm making this thing do this and this thing do that and it just kind of molds into a song or it molds into something that you didn't expect there's songs where i've set out to make something i might make this genre of music and it's going to be this thing and then by the time i'm done it's like This is not even close to what I set out to. It's cool, but this isn't what we set out to do.

57:48 Justin Kohler I like it. It's just not what I expected. So there's a little bit of the excitement and kind of journey that you can go down.

57:58 Justin Kohler It's also one of those things like it's very expressive. So if you're feeling sad, you know, you can kind of.

58:04 Justin Kohler express it in a musical way or frustrated you know take your you can take your your emotional beatings out on a drum kit you know or something like that it's it's just I don't know music has always been somewhere for me in the background even when I did more artwork there was always music playing of some kind and it's always it's always spurred some kind of emotional response

58:30 Luke F. Walton I like that. And I like the making art. while listening to music i think that that is so pervasive across all different art forms music is like a force multiplier like takes you it can take you to that extra place where you're like oh now i feel expressive in whatever other art form whatever else i'm doing that's really cool

58:51 Justin Kohler it's kind of like a book for the ears like you can you can listen to a piece of music and just completely get lost and on on a journey of of what's going on in the song and Kind of like you do with a book you read a book and it takes you on a journey and you get lost and you realize hours have gone by

59:11 Luke F. Walton Love it Well, next time I'm in your neck of the woods, let's grab a beer or something or coffee or both. That

59:19 Justin Kohler Oh,

59:19 Luke F. Walton sounds

59:19 Justin Kohler absolutely.

59:19 Luke F. Walton like fun. You guys do have some world-class beers. I'm in San Diego, so I like to think we've got a little friendly rivalry between our beer scenes.

59:30 Justin Kohler A little bit. I've been to San Diego. It's not quite as large as the Northern Colorado scene, but it's close. It's pretty close. Yeah.

59:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah, maybe I can bring a few of my faves. We can shoot them out. Awesome.

59:45 Justin Kohler Awesome.

59:46 Luke F. Walton Well, really appreciate you taking the time. This is a great conversation and wish you best of luck with the studio and the Atmos build and all that good stuff.

59:53 Justin Kohler Well, thank you kindly. And I've really enjoyed our time here and can't wait to see what else you guys do.

59:59 Luke F. Walton Thank you. Oh, and where can people find you in terms

60:02 Justin Kohler Oh, they

60:02 Luke F. Walton of places?

60:03 Justin Kohler can find me in multiple places. We have our social media Instagram that's Fox and Robyn. It's R-O-B-Y-N. People misspell it all the time and then they can't find me. But it's Fox and Robyn Rec. That's pretty much all of our social media handles. spike so if you go to twitter or if you go to i guess it's not twitter anymore um you get you go to x or you go to uh what's the other ones that are the uh threads

60:30 Luke F. Walton Instagram.

60:31 Justin Kohler or instagram facebook it'll pretty much pull up everywhere um we also have a website that's foxandrobynrec.com that has some of the stuff that we worked on and kind of

60:44 Justin Kohler what our space i guess it doesn't look like that anymore you just have pictures of what the space looks like if you want pictures what the space looks like go to instagram that's where we actually spend a lot of our time interacting with people anyways awesome

60:56 Luke F. Walton Awesome. Well definitely everybody hit him up and hopefully we talk again soon. Take care.

61:03 Justin Kohler yeah you too