An Interview with Wilson Harwood

1:21 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? I'm Scoobert Doobert. Welcome back to Love Music More, and I'm joined with Wilson Harwood. We're going to talk about what it's really like to soundproof your studio. Welcome to the show.

1:32 Wilson Harwood Hey, thanks for having me.

1:33 Luke F. Walton So I'm obsessed with this topic because it's one of those like. endless pursuits of design and perfection and failure and like as you can see behind me not not the most efficient I'm in a bedroom I threw up some panels I'm doing my best but I love to talk about this topic because it combines so many different things from taste design the science and just so excited to pick your brain about it

2:02 Wilson Harwood Yeah, awesome. Well, I'm excited too. And you know, it's, we'll try to keep it not super nerdy and we'll have fun and explore,

2:09 Luke F. Walton Get a little nerdy.

2:10 Wilson Harwood yeah, explore the topic as much as you want to.

2:13 Luke F. Walton Awesome. How do you even start? Where do you say like, okay, maybe you're building your own studio from scratch, or maybe you're trying to retrofit your home? Like, how does that just even starting point kind of determine what you're able to accomplish? The path that you're trying to do, the options that are even on the table.

2:33 Wilson Harwood Yeah, that's an awesome first question, where to start, which is not where everyone always goes.

2:40 Wilson Harwood So I just want to preface this by saying that, you know, I come from a very DIY background and I come as like a musician first and then a producer second and then third, this weird new career as, which I've been in for like the last half decade as really what I call myself as a studio designer and acoustician and honestly taking on this architectural engineering role, like not sound engineer, but like. like real

3:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

3:07 Wilson Harwood engineer

3:07 Luke F. Walton totally.

3:08 Wilson Harwood structural engineer um so anyways that's sort of my backstory in a nutshell and when you come to these projects i think it's really there's a fork in the road right at the very beginning the moment you decide like hey i want a soundproof studio you're really saying first off i want to build something like big like a construction project not soundproofing is not like just putting panels on the wall which a lot of people think soundproofing

3:32 Wilson Harwood really and really we should say sound isolation is

3:35 Luke F. Walton Yes.

3:36 Wilson Harwood is like stopping sound from coming in and out of your room so once you decide you want that and you're not just going to do what everyone else is doing these days and there's nothing wrong with it which is like taking a bedroom uh putting some panels on the on the wall like you're like you have there exactly you know not never knocking anyone i'm in the same exact situation right now but like that is

3:58 Wilson Harwood different than what I do which is kind of build designs for people that are trying to do this so that's the first thing you want to say to yourself and then the second thing is do I want to DIY this 100% myself become a YouTube junkie and like learn how to do it on my own or do I want to hire an expert and have them do it and treat it like as if you were adding an addition to your house because

4:23 Luke F. Walton Okay.

4:23 Wilson Harwood that's like even i came from the background of diy like

4:29 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

4:29 Wilson Harwood i said like i started this whole business from the person who's probably listening to this right now and thinking oh like i want to build a studio and like this is gonna be awesome but i've come after five years of doing this being like

4:43 Wilson Harwood no the best way to do it is to hire a professional and like not necessarily do it yourself i'm not saying you can't but i definitely am a little biased in that that's my career but that's the decision you have to make right

4:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

4:55 Wilson Harwood off the bat so that's kind of where i would say people should start is like one is this something that i really want to do myself and then if if not am i gonna hire someone and then Just have the dream in my mind and not have to try to figure out everything on YouTube or reading books or things like that.

5:16 Luke F. Walton Yeah, and I think that it speaks to the differences of... The goal of like, is it sound treatment as in like my space, I'm able to mix decently well, but I still have to rely on headphones quite a bit.

5:29 Luke F. Walton You know, I'm making that trade off, but I also don't mind if some sound leaks or my neighbors hear it a little bit. That's fine. So I'm not soundproofing, I'm sound treating versus like soundproofing, like say, for example, somebody wants to practice drums at 3am or record very loud music or crank their amp all the way up.

5:46 Luke F. Walton yep and they live in a suburban environment or whatever like that that is a much harder challenge than like rounding out the edges like isolating sound is just i don't know if you know it until you've done i built a studio um with with a buddy that i owned for a while and it was uh impossible in a lot of ways and we we hired but we also diy was kind of a combination and the thing that killed me was doors like doors it's like you got to get into the space it's

6:15 Luke F. Walton It's all of a sudden like your isolation has this built-in weak point. We never quite solved it. That

6:21 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

6:21 Luke F. Walton was a...

6:23 Wilson Harwood It's a tricky one. Yeah. And, and, you know, that's the thing that we all come into it with this like really, especially musicians, you know, we're used to just like, especially musicians of our generation, you know, millennials and younger, it's like, you're just like. pre-programmed to be like i can figure anything out i

6:42 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

6:42 Wilson Harwood can do anything

6:43 Luke F. Walton We

6:43 Wilson Harwood like

6:43 Luke F. Walton just got to do it. Yeah.

6:44 Wilson Harwood and i don't have a huge budget yeah no budget but i've got some time and i've got friends and like they're you know i hear this all the time of people being like yeah my friends in the music industry are also in construction because it's just like they go kind of hand in hand um and so you always know somebody who's like i can get a discount here do this and and there's nothing wrong with that per se it's just really really challenging to do it right

7:06 Wilson Harwood right the first time and

7:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

7:07 Wilson Harwood like with your whole point too of like the doors yeah like i just default now to like paying for the soundproof doors and we use that in our projects we have a company we really like and that's what we do um when i first built my first studio we did a soundproof door that i

7:26 Wilson Harwood pretty much designed off this book that became like my bible of how to build studios which was the roger vice book home recording studio build it by like the pros which if you're interested in this topic like for sure pick up that book it'll be heavy you know heavy reading for a little bit but over time as you read it over and over again you'll be like okay i'm starting to get this and that's that teaches you a lot but even that book you know we built a door and i did it to spec and then it just didn't quite work right

7:54 Wilson Harwood and so i spent the next like five years tweaking it fiddling with it you know and it worked decently well but there's a lot of money i always joke like we probably put like twenty five hundred dollars of materials and labor into the door or twenty five hundred dollars

8:08 Wilson Harwood up front and then about like another two thousand dollars over time trying to like fiddle with it with labor and seals and so it was like a five thousand dollar door and I was like we should have just bought one of those expensive soundproof doors you know like and that that's like a metaphor for the whole process I think I've learned is that you'll learn a ton and that's amazing but if you want it done right the first time you probably should hire hire the bros for sure

8:35 Luke F. Walton Well, let's talk about why it's so hard. low frequencies just kind of

8:40 Wilson Harwood the yeah

8:40 Luke F. Walton size of waves like i feel like a lot of people are like well like i listen to loud music in my car i close the car doors i roll up my windows and boom soundproofed it's like why is it such a big challenge if you're doing a drum kit a really loud amp bass or whatever yeah

8:52 Wilson Harwood yeah that's a really good point and it's funny the car analogy i've never thought of is kind of true it's like and one of the reasons the car works so well is because it's pretty airtight so like the three things of of sound isolation

9:04 Wilson Harwood that are that make it so hard to kind of directly answer your question is that it really comes down to like the frequency spectrum so like you know if we're talking from like high mid frequencies higher pitched sounds those are easier to block than the low frequencies the bass the subwoofers so you know if you close your doors in a car and the person's listening to like classical music you might not hear it but if they're listening to like the latest like

9:31 Wilson Harwood like hip-hop rap track with Yeah, like massive subwoofer bass like you're probably gonna hear it you know and that's the difference like same music in a car analogy but the frequency spectrum is different so when we talk about that with music and musicians you know sound isolating for voice like tv noise people talking like you said maybe you're in your studio i do we see a drum kit behind you though but i'm like it's for a producer

9:56 Wilson Harwood it's bedroom mostly for practice. yeah for like bedroom producers if you're just like listening at like quiet mixing volumes and

10:03 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

10:03 Wilson Harwood predominantly doing vocals you may not need that much sound isolation but for people who want to play drums at 2 a.m you know you definitely do need sound isolation and and the challenge becomes it needs to be completely airtight so the room has to be completely airtight there's no leaks whatsoever and it needs to have a ton of mass so so

10:25 Wilson Harwood predominantly that's done by just lots of layers of drywall lots of layers on your wall and then it needs to

10:31 Luke F. Walton be yeah

10:32 Wilson Harwood decoupled so the interior structure of your room has to be decoupled from the exterior structure of your room yeah

10:40 Luke F. Walton what does that mean could you talk more about because that that's thrown out a lot but it's like okay it's a room within a room but things can't be touching like how does that actually work

10:48 Wilson Harwood well the room within a room example is good but it's flawed in the sense that when people imagine a literally a floating room within a

10:58 Luke F. Walton room Yeah

10:58 Wilson Harwood it starts to defy physics and their brain starts to hurt so in theory you're like oh yeah that makes sense and then when you think about it for a second you're like wait no that doesn't make sense yeah

11:07 Luke F. Walton Gravity

11:08 Wilson Harwood gravity how do we do

11:10 Luke F. Walton that Okay

11:10 Wilson Harwood so uh you know i always start with a concrete slab because that's like and ideally the concrete slab is like isolated from the rest of the house so

11:21 Luke F. Walton Okay.

11:22 Wilson Harwood either a backyard would be the best or like a separate shed or garage is cool you know basements are totally fair game because they're usually on the earth so that's that's your soundproof floor that solves that problem and then the walls you know you can use specialty clips to decouple the drywall off the walls or you can just build a new wall altogether sort of going into that room within a room idea

11:48 Wilson Harwood and then your ceiling you can use specialty clips to decouple the drywall from the ceiling joist the uh above you or

11:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

11:55 Wilson Harwood you can build a new ceiling altogether if you have the money and the space

11:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

11:59 Wilson Harwood so

11:59 Luke F. Walton Right.

12:00 Wilson Harwood that's it in a nutshell that's how you do it that's

12:03 Luke F. Walton So

12:03 Wilson Harwood how i

12:03 Luke F. Walton if

12:03 Wilson Harwood do you're it sharing yeah

12:04 Luke F. Walton the same ceiling, you are no longer decoupled. So those sound waves can go travel

12:09 Wilson Harwood well

12:09 Luke F. Walton through that.

12:09 Wilson Harwood exactly so the thing that we talked about here was like you're decoupling the final what i call sheetboard layers or drywall

12:17 Luke F. Walton Okay.

12:18 Wilson Harwood so

12:18 Luke F. Walton Okay.

12:19 Wilson Harwood your ceiling joists may be shared but if you use special clips and for what we call furring channels which are these metal channels and shoot your drywall into those not the actual wood joists then it's decoupled so there's engineering principles

12:36 Wilson Harwood using specialty acoustic clips that get you that decoupling without just truly floating a room within a room and

12:42 Luke F. Walton Interesting. What

12:43 Wilson Harwood then they're

12:43 Luke F. Walton are those clips made out of?

12:44 Wilson Harwood usually made

12:46 Luke F. Walton Not

12:46 Wilson Harwood out

12:46 Luke F. Walton Newtonian.

12:46 Wilson Harwood of metal and then rubber yeah

12:48 Luke F. Walton Metal and rubber. Okay.

12:49 Wilson Harwood and then the rubber decouples yeah so the rubber decouples the metal holds it strong and yeah they work pretty well like yeah

13:01 Luke F. Walton So I'm curious, too, about like windows or sliding doors or like you want to be able to see the musician, you don't want to necessarily just be trapped in like a

13:10 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

13:10 Luke F. Walton coffin or something.

13:12 Wilson Harwood No, definitely not.

13:13 Luke F. Walton Like there's definitely like a human component of you still want it to be a vibey space, you want to be able to communicate. But it just naturally seems like wouldn't a window be bad

13:23 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

13:23 Luke F. Walton or like create terrible acoustics or like how do you You deal with that challenge.

13:29 Wilson Harwood yeah so windows are usually not advised for

13:33 Luke F. Walton Okay.

13:33 Wilson Harwood high levels of sound isolation so

13:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

13:35 Wilson Harwood if you're not if you're if you're a drummer and you're a metal drummer and you want to play at 2 a.m i'm going to be like hey we can eliminate windows your

13:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

13:43 Wilson Harwood life is

13:43 Luke F. Walton sure.

13:43 Wilson Harwood going to be easier but some people are not vampires and they need a little bit of like light in their life and that's where you know specialty soundproof windows come in so we either build these specialty windows and we design the design for the contractor or builder to build them or we have a specific supplier that we like that we trust that we say hey client you should go buy this specific soundproof window and install it this

14:11 Wilson Harwood but this way and that will lead to the results that you want um the concepts are the same from like a abstract level you know window needs to be really heavy have that mass and

14:23 Luke F. Walton Okay.

14:24 Wilson Harwood then it needs to be decoupled so like either installed on the interior wall or somehow decoupled from the existing frame and then you also need to have you know it make it airtight so that there's no way air can pass like underneath it or around it so a typical window might have more air and we're talking like minuscule air leaks we're not talking like something you can see we're talking like you

14:50 Wilson Harwood you just need to run acoustic sealant like which is acoustic caulking around things to make sure it's airtight yeah

14:55 Luke F. Walton So should people be viewing like audio waves like water or something like a fluid dynamic kind of thing?

15:01 Wilson Harwood yeah

15:01 Luke F. Walton Okay.

15:02 Wilson Harwood and another way to look at it is light like i think a really great example is if you have a window Well a window is a bad example. Let's take a door you

15:12 Luke F. Walton Sure,

15:12 Wilson Harwood have a door

15:13 Luke F. Walton you got it.

15:13 Wilson Harwood and you have a light in the hallway and then you close the door and you're in the room You can see the light in the hallway coming around the door where there's air because where air

15:23 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

15:23 Wilson Harwood is light will travel through it so when you're sealing your door up you know that's a good test like if i can't see the light in the hallway coming around the door it's sealed and same thing with water like if we were to take your hose and fill up your hallway which you wouldn't want to do this is the worst way to do it same idea you know the door should hold back the water in

15:41 Luke F. Walton I

15:41 Wilson Harwood theory yeah

15:41 Luke F. Walton think that helps because obviously it's an invisible thing, audio, or at least to our eyes. and so you think like oh it's the door's closed like

15:51 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

15:52 Luke F. Walton why why can people hear it so strongly it's like well the door like you're saying the mass i feel like aren't aren't most just like normal home doors like hollow are

16:00 Wilson Harwood Yeah,

16:00 Luke F. Walton they basically

16:00 Wilson Harwood they

16:01 Luke F. Walton yeah

16:01 Wilson Harwood are.

16:01 Luke F. Walton and

16:02 Wilson Harwood Yeah, totally.

16:02 Luke F. Walton the studio doors i actually um i've only broken one bone and i broke it in five different

16:08 Wilson Harwood Oh

16:08 Luke F. Walton places there's

16:08 Wilson Harwood my gosh.

16:09 Luke F. Walton a studio door right onto my big toe

16:11 Wilson Harwood Oh my gosh. Yeah.

16:12 Luke F. Walton shattered it's

16:13 Wilson Harwood Holy cow.

16:14 Luke F. Walton like trying

16:15 Wilson Harwood Yeah, I bet.

16:16 Luke F. Walton to put it on the uh on the frame. But

16:19 Wilson Harwood well

16:19 Luke F. Walton those suckers are heavy.

16:20 Wilson Harwood they

16:20 Luke F. Walton I know

16:21 Wilson Harwood are

16:21 Luke F. Walton that much.

16:21 Wilson Harwood they are indeed ouch yeah yeah they are anywhere from like 200 to 350 pounds usually per door so we're talking a ton of mass and but the thing that people don't realize with all this is like the masses is that the door like we said that fell on your toe but you know all that air around that door has got to be sealed or else the door is almost useless yeah

16:48 Luke F. Walton And that's the reason why it fell on my toe is it was such a tight fit that

16:54 Wilson Harwood oh my

16:54 Luke F. Walton it slipped

16:55 Wilson Harwood gosh

16:55 Luke F. Walton off.

16:55 Wilson Harwood oh my gosh yeah

16:57 Luke F. Walton So, you know. Doors happen.

17:00 Wilson Harwood gotta be careful yeah

17:01 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:01 Wilson Harwood yeah

17:02 Luke F. Walton But it really hammered home how much mass is packed into such a tight little space and no wonder they cost so much. Like how do you get a door to be that heavy?

17:11 Wilson Harwood i know right it is crazy yeah it is you're right they cost a lot because they're so specialty and and you know it's a lot of material

17:20 Luke F. Walton yeah totally and it's such an interesting like um the idea of like rock soul or the different components like the is that right rock wool um

17:27 Wilson Harwood Mm-hmm.

17:28 Luke F. Walton the stuff that's crammed in between uh or inside of these sound panels i think it's the same kind of stuff of like

17:36 Luke F. Walton The engineering and the mentality and the materials and the construction that has to go into an acoustic version of something you just feel like, yeah, put some foam on the wall.

17:45 Wilson Harwood Yeah,

17:45 Luke F. Walton It's like,

17:46 Wilson Harwood right?

17:46 Luke F. Walton well, what

17:46 Wilson Harwood Yeah. No, not exactly. Yeah.

17:49 Luke F. Walton would you say to people that were like, I don't know, trying to go about this in a DIY way? Would it basically be like, hey, lower your expectations if you're trying to do soundproofing and try to go more towards treatment? or um like what is what is the way that you could do this for like minimum dollars is it or is it basically just like hey you you gotta spend in order to hit these goals

18:13 Wilson Harwood yeah these days i i've changed my tune to you gotta spend if you want to hit these goals and

18:19 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:19 Wilson Harwood especially if you want to like work with someone like me it's like hey we're we're kind of getting pretty serious over here you know like you know if you're hiring me at this point we're going to give you excellent results you know we're working at a super high level you're getting full construction you know the whole nine yards but if you're in that diy category like i said at the very beginning of the the podcast here

18:40 Wilson Harwood You know, the thing to think about is to definitely expand your idea of cost and time

18:47 Luke F. Walton Sure.

18:48 Wilson Harwood to

18:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:48 Wilson Harwood be realistic with construction. And one of the big things I think I've noticed with people who are musicians or anything.

18:58 Wilson Harwood or DIY enthusiast is that you're usually used to things costing a certain range, but when you get into projects like this size,

19:11 Wilson Harwood Yeah. Suddenly, you know, $2,000 worth of acoustic panels, which seems like a lot of money, and it is definitely a lot of money, is nothing compared to, say, the $25,000 to $30,000 a typical garage or basement conversion could cost just in materials alone. And I usually get... people coming to me saying they want to do it between 10 and 20 000 20 000 seems like very comfortable to i think a lot of diy people

19:39 Luke F. Walton Okay.

19:39 Wilson Harwood and i've had to kind of push it up to like 30 especially with inflation and i just think that that's probably the biggest thing that most people don't realize is just the sheer cost of materials and construction that it takes let alone the complexity of the design

19:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

19:55 Wilson Harwood so like

19:55 Luke F. Walton right.

19:55 Wilson Harwood it is a big undertaking and I think that's important if I could tell my younger self that it would have been helpful because I was definitely at that stage when I started this business and built my first studio oh we can do it for like eleven thousand dollars and then I was like oh I can do it for 20 and then it ended up costing you know 45 60 thousand dollars when

20:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

20:14 Wilson Harwood it was all right. said and done and and that's not a place most people want to be in

20:19 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Exactly.

20:20 Wilson Harwood So that's the unfortunate truth. I don't want to like paint a rosy picture that I think going in with those expectations is definitely.

20:29 Luke F. Walton absolutely

20:29 Wilson Harwood a good idea you

20:30 Luke F. Walton well

20:31 Wilson Harwood know yeah

20:31 Luke F. Walton having the expectation helps you be able to budget or do it later or do it when you're ready or

20:35 Wilson Harwood exactly

20:35 Luke F. Walton or like

20:36 Wilson Harwood yeah

20:36 Luke F. Walton your career is demanding it or whatever um going in with the diy i always kind of feel like diy is the 80 20 thing of like you can get 80 of the results for 20 of the effort or 20 of the budget or 20 of the time but in soundproofing like you say on your website that last 10 is really what you're paying for

20:54 Wilson Harwood yeah exactly it it is and like um you know it's it's one of those things where i think it's really important to like at the beginning of the call you know you told me a lot of the listeners are kind of in college or maybe exploring an audio career or something

21:10 Luke F. Walton Yep.

21:10 Wilson Harwood like that and i would say that sound isolation is definitely a luxury in some ways um it's something that if you really need it or really really want it and you have the means then

21:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

21:22 Wilson Harwood it's a good idea but it's not one of those like oh if i want to start a career in audio i must have a soundproof studio it's sort of like hey man do do what you what you're doing you know do what i did for many many years which is just like have a bedroom studio produce get good at your skill set you know get good at engineering get good at the business side if you want to make money off of it and then you

21:45 Wilson Harwood when you're within means and you have some money behind you then you know tackle

21:50 Luke F. Walton Yeah, exactly.

21:50 Wilson Harwood the soundproof studio

21:51 Luke F. Walton It's my dream too. Yeah,

21:52 Wilson Harwood yeah

21:53 Luke F. Walton totally.

21:53 Wilson Harwood exactly yeah so it's kind of a weird thing you know and it's like i i almost feel like these days it's necessary if you are in a very loud environment it's like a necessary thing if you play drums in a loud environment but it's not like a requirement to make amazing music and

22:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

22:11 Wilson Harwood I would definitely stand by that you know great records are made in bedrooms all the time But if your dog's barking or there's a vacuum next door, it's very inconvenient. And so a soundproof studio would be pretty sweet.

22:26 Luke F. Walton traffic yeah

22:26 Wilson Harwood Yeah,

22:27 Luke F. Walton yeah

22:27 Wilson Harwood yeah, exactly.

22:27 Luke F. Walton no agreed and like um it also is genre dependent like you were saying like a metal drummer versus a lot of the stuff that i do i play super quiet or like or maybe i'm just tracking hi-hat and like ghost notes on the snare and the rest is electronic like that like an injection of whatever but you do not need to have full-on studio but if i was doing like

22:48 Luke F. Walton rock drums nirvana-esque whatever like this is not going to cut it it's

22:53 Wilson Harwood Yes, exactly.

22:53 Luke F. Walton just not going to work my neighbors will kick me out uh it's not going to sound great it's just that's actually something that i'd love to talk about too is like dimensions and angles because like i'm in a box and that's the worst part about my space and part of the reason why i invested enough to get it okay but i recognize like it's never going to get great uh here because it's a box it's like parallel walls um not

23:16 Luke F. Walton Not super high ceilings. How does all that factor into kind of your construction plan or when you're doing something very bespoke, are you thinking about those angles or the shapes of things like when you're doing it custom?

23:30 Wilson Harwood Yeah, so I have like a really strong philosophy on this from my design side. And because I'm really in this home studio niche right

23:39 Luke F. Walton Yes.

23:40 Wilson Harwood now,

23:40 Luke F. Walton Right.

23:40 Wilson Harwood I don't, you know, we've done some commercial facilities, but I would say majority of our work is converting either a basement or a garage or building something in the backyard.

23:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

23:49 Wilson Harwood We're always working with like smaller spaces. So if you go in the literature and like read books and you're like, oh, you never should. you should design or build a studio in a box and you should never you know you should have angled walls and all

24:02 Luke F. Walton Right.

24:02 Wilson Harwood these things that you hear on the internet or all the time i kind of push it to the wayside and

24:08 Luke F. Walton Cool.

24:09 Wilson Harwood i say you know if i can give you better acoustics based on the dimensions of the room for room modes i will but

24:16 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:16 Wilson Harwood i won't ever let it ruin your room so

24:19 Luke F. Walton Okay.

24:19 Wilson Harwood a lot of people come to me obsessed with room modes and like and like listen i've been on this room calculator for the last month and i can't decide between like a length of you know 10.67 versus 10.89 and i'm like okay here we go you know and and the thing is is like if you if the room becomes so small and constrained that you can't use it anymore then

24:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:43 Wilson Harwood the room modes did not matter you know it's like So there's a different mentality I've kind of developed with working in the home and studio environment and then also becoming sort of the soundproof. guy you know

24:57 Luke F. Walton Okay.

24:57 Wilson Harwood like you can hire a studio designer and they might become obsessed with acoustics they like but then they just kind of half-ass the soundproofing side and i'm kind of saying hey in the market i'm i'm the soundproofing guy i'm gonna not half-ass soundproofing and then i'm gonna also take acoustics seriously within the container of the home studio world and so i've i've seen people do both i've heard of stories like crazy stories like people like i'm digging out my garage to

25:23 Wilson Harwood two feet to get the ideal ceiling height and i'm like okay that probably costs like ten to fifteen thousand dollars you know like

25:29 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah.

25:30 Wilson Harwood all right just for that perfect acoustic environment and i would never tell a client that so that's like the difference between

25:36 Luke F. Walton Right.

25:36 Wilson Harwood my approach and maybe some of the other designers out there and yeah that's just that's a philosophical decision you know because

25:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

25:45 Wilson Harwood physics physics is always going to say you need a big ass room Right.

25:49 Luke F. Walton always but i've talked to like we were talking about chefs like i've talked to a bunch of these

25:54 Luke F. Walton pros of pros and a lot of them are like yeah i mean no studio is perfect like they've worked in the best studios in the world like this one's got this weird quirk here it's just like i adjust to it and i figure this out and we work with it and it's kind of like even if the multi multi-million dollar studios are that way it's like your home studio is going to have some quirks but that's also going to be what maybe makes it character characterful or interesting or

26:19 Luke F. Walton its own thing if you obsess over every little acoustic refinement like maybe you end up losing character at the same time yeah

26:27 Wilson Harwood A hundred percent. I couldn't agree with you more, especially in this world where we're like moving past splice into AI. It's

26:34 Luke F. Walton yep

26:34 Wilson Harwood like your room becomes your sound. And

26:37 Luke F. Walton totally

26:37 Wilson Harwood the more you can lean into that, you know, the imperfections of your room, the imperfections of everything making yourself stand out.

26:45 Wilson Harwood the better you're going to be i think that's like my sort of intuition instinct kicking in for future musicians and producers and so like for example get if you did had a reverb chamber in your house and you did an old school thing where like you put a speaker in your bathroom or in your hallway and you're you never used a reverb plug-in it was always your hallway no

27:08 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah.

27:09 Wilson Harwood one else could have that sound And Yeah, so like, to me, that's cool.

27:14 Luke F. Walton agreed.

27:14 Wilson Harwood And it's kind of the like, it's not totally the world like the world I'm in is like, making pristine environments that are quiet. But when it comes to acoustics, I don't get too crazy. I'm like, let's stick to the basics. You know, we're not gonna like go too nuts beyond what's reasonable, kind of like what I said earlier.

27:36 Luke F. Walton Totally, totally. And I love that. home studios are becoming hopefully forever like such a goal or a waypoint or like a thing to drive towards for musicians because

27:48 Wilson Harwood Mm-hmm.

27:49 Luke F. Walton it opens up all this opportunity of like oh i can i can play at any hour i can record at any time completely on my own schedule like you get access to the means of production so to speak of

27:59 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

27:59 Luke F. Walton in your own house and it's it's the coolest thing even if it's on the microscale like i have or it had where i was like on the dresser you know that was still the same thing of like i was making it making interesting records in a bedroom and now the bedroom just gets a little bit better and hopefully someday i would love to have like an isolated cool thing that i can invite you know professionals yeah

28:17 Wilson Harwood yeah yeah exactly and yeah and someday you will and like and that's that's when you can decide like hey do i want to soundproof it do i want to like go full on um or do i not like sometimes i look at some of these studios and they just look so cool because they're just so natural

28:36 Luke F. Walton yeah totally

28:36 Wilson Harwood and i i look at them a lot now with a different eye because i i look at them and i say you know i've spent so much time reading about acoustics and sound isolation i just nerded out at the beginning of this whole journey because i was like i just need to be an expert An expert, you know, I need to know

28:50 Luke F. Walton Totally.

28:50 Wilson Harwood everything and then as I looked around at different studios on the internet and visited them in real life I was like there's just so many places where this is just not textbook at all and

29:02 Luke F. Walton Yep.

29:03 Wilson Harwood it either works or it doesn't you know but it has vibe and it usually when it works it's because it has this vibe that just worked and therefore they get more business and blah blah blah you know it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy I've definitely heard stories here in Nashville of like multi-million dollar rooms like you said that just sound terrible it's

29:21 Luke F. Walton Uh

29:21 Wilson Harwood almost like the designer was like trying to just make it look cool or like i don't even know what they were thinking but it just didn't sound good and they're like what what happened you know so

29:33 Luke F. Walton Great.

29:33 Wilson Harwood that's perplexing to me too but my theory might be that they just get so in the books so in the math so in the that they kind of lose track of what they're actually doing

29:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I think that's actually an interesting take to combine with the splice AI stuff. I feel like probably more and more people will have the textbook answer. Like sometimes I'll talk to a lawyer and I'll go and I'll do all the like ChatGPT or whatever and try to educate myself as much as possible. And I'll bring it to the lawyer and it'll be like, you way overthought this.

30:05 Wilson Harwood Yeah,

30:05 Luke F. Walton I

30:05 Wilson Harwood yeah.

30:05 Luke F. Walton step back. What are you actually trying to solve? Like you're trying to get somebody not to sue you for like this music that you made or whatever, you know, except it's like.

30:13 Luke F. Walton you can go way down a rabbit hole through the use of AI-assisted things or internet and then the real experts are the ones that end up having taste and have zoom out perspective and have been like yeah I tried all of that it's not going to move the needle that's what you pay for and I think it's going to be more and more that way

30:34 Wilson Harwood yeah that's actually a really fascinating point and it kind of ties back to like what i was saying this whole time of my own evolution as this designer is coming back to that point of like yeah you could do diy you could diy this thing and i'm like all for it you know i'm not going to help you on it but like you can do it and uh but at the end of the day i'm like for the people that come to me and are like hey wilson you know i've thought about this for months and i'm sick of it

30:59 Wilson Harwood can you just help me i'm like yeah like i've thought about it for years every day you know and like i literally wake up in the middle of night and i'll like have an idea of how this could be different so like

31:10 Luke F. Walton Cool.

31:10 Wilson Harwood you can't compete with someone like me

31:12 Luke F. Walton No,

31:12 Wilson Harwood nor do of you want

31:13 Luke F. Walton course not.

31:13 Wilson Harwood to you don't

31:13 Luke F. Walton No.

31:13 Wilson Harwood want it like you know the lawyer you can't compete with the lawyer you know the lawyer can sift through chat gpt in a second and be like no dude like this is what you need to focus on and it's the same way for experts in any field like at some point respecting that and appreciating it is probably the biggest lesson I've learned.

31:32 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

31:33 Wilson Harwood Coming from my very DIY, very independent musician mindset, it's been almost like a massive identity shift I've had to accept.

31:42 Luke F. Walton I interrupt this very important broadcast. 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 screen, right? You click on the dot dot dot on Spotify. Under there, it says rate show and you go and you click it.

31:59 Luke F. Walton five stars if you could do that for me that's the best way for the algorithms all this 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 thank you so much and here's the rest of the episode yeah

32:22 Wilson Harwood But it's been good overall, like I feel like a better, more mature person. kind of

32:26 Luke F. Walton Uh

32:26 Wilson Harwood accepting

32:27 Luke F. Walton -huh.

32:27 Wilson Harwood it but it constantly means fighting that sort of scarcity mindset that many independent musicians have and this is kind of interesting too from like those of you who are listening who are starting out like

32:40 Wilson Harwood try to fight that try to fight that mindset when you see it in your friends and stuff like you might feel like you don't have any money you might feel like you know the world's against you you might feel like we all need to get off spotify you might feel like you know the man's bringing us down but try to fight it a little bit because i think

32:58 Wilson Harwood you can come above it and it's like a better healthier mindset overall and it's more the way the world works like people work together people pay money for things like

33:06 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

33:07 Wilson Harwood yeah

33:07 Luke F. Walton I think I get where you're going because there's a difference between budget being like a forcing function or a positive constraint or something that paralyzes you and makes it so that you don't go and do something where that like scarcity mindset or victim me mindset or like pessimist mindset. You can have the same number of dollars or resources and...

33:32 Luke F. Walton the mindset that you bring to those resources can change the impact that those resources ultimately can have and

33:40 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

33:41 Luke F. Walton i also agree with the premise of like earlier on like when i was younger i did not see the trajectory for how anyone makes money like i just didn't and now that i'm a little bit older it's like oh i get it like you deliver value to other people people give you money and you just have to like maximize the amount of value that you're giving to as many people as

34:00 Luke F. Walton full as possible and then you're gonna start to get more and more money like

34:02 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

34:02 Luke F. Walton it just that happens it really does music is maybe the worst least efficient part of the economy for that to happen but it still happens in music too just

34:11 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

34:11 Luke F. Walton you gotta you gotta grind it out it takes 10 years like it just does and it sucks that it does like you you want to come out of college and like start earning and start getting but even like spotify music career and stuff like that like some people are super lucky but for most people it takes them 10 years and then they start to get a royalty check Seasheck.

34:27 Wilson Harwood yeah yeah it's so true yeah that's such a good point with all of this and it kind of shifts out of like the soundproofing world that we're in but you know part of me is like i'm so steeped in the music culture still like i still i come from that like i so i feel for anybody who's who's in that place and i think both Scoobert and i have figured out ways to make a living through that circuitous path in

34:56 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

34:56 Wilson Harwood music, whether it's directly as a musician or an artist or an engineer or a soundproof studio designer, you know.

35:03 Wilson Harwood everyone finds their way it seems like whether it's what they ultimately wanted to do or not it's

35:10 Luke F. Walton totally

35:10 Wilson Harwood kind of this weird thing uh

35:11 Luke F. Walton it's a push

35:12 Wilson Harwood yeah

35:12 Luke F. Walton and pull like the the other people that are asking value like you don't want to abstract it away to say the economy it's like no it's like literally my other friends that are making music pull me in certain directions and you go oh like i can afford to go to japan if i do more mixing it's like oh i'm doing more mixing now and

35:28 Wilson Harwood Yeah,

35:29 Luke F. Walton i love it and it's really cool but it's not what i thought i would be doing i was scared to mix like six seven years ago i was like that's not what i do i produce i don't mix like i give it to somebody else and then it's just like well other people want you to do it and they like it so now you do and

35:43 Wilson Harwood yeah, yeah, exactly.

35:44 Luke F. Walton over time you get good at it it's you kind of have to be in it long enough and then you start to stack things it's like hey you only make 200 over here but like that's 200 and you stack it with another little role and then it turns into a career like I have talked to so many people on this podcast that are like you know like a cellist or a

36:02 Luke F. Walton he has some some sort of less traditional uh kind of part of pop music but they'll have like this cello gig and they'll also play in a community orchestra and they'll also teach and they got a gig at the community college and now they're recording and they're recording themselves and sending it to people on the internet and now they've got a career but

36:18 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

36:19 Luke F. Walton it took them took them kind of like wandering in the wilderness and then building a circle and then all the pieces start to grow and then now you have a career that's unique to your own it's completely different i actually i've Actually, I'd be super curious to hear about your kind of career arc in terms of like, yeah, like, where did you come from? How did you get here?

36:37 Luke F. Walton And when did you start to feel like, okay, no, this, this is the main thing.

36:42 Wilson Harwood Yeah, it's a super interesting story, as I think every musician's story is,

36:47 Luke F. Walton I

36:47 Wilson Harwood if agree. you're, you

36:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

36:48 Wilson Harwood know, I'm turning 38 next week.

36:50 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

36:50 Wilson Harwood And so I'm pushing 40 and it's starting to get to that point where it's like. whoa i've been doing this for a while you

36:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

36:56 Wilson Harwood know it's like oh my

36:57 Luke F. Walton right.

36:57 Wilson Harwood god like what happened to time my journey is so typical i think of everybody's which is like i wanted to be a famous musician in high school and middle school played in bands mine's a little different in that i actually majored in music in college which you know not everyone does but that's almost like besides the point uh but i just like i had that opportunity and i was like oh yeah i'm gonna do it so i majored in classical guitar

37:21 Wilson Harwood are uh immediately graduated and started a band like Yeah. why would i do anything else like and then uh you know taught music lessons to make money and that was great i did that for like five years played played music in boulder colorado and like had the best life yeah i had like the best life ever i was skiing i was at the time i didn't think i had the best life but looking back it was by far the best life and uh i taught lessons and i played in a band and we

37:49 Wilson Harwood and we gigged like two to three times a week and rehearsed two to three times a week so it was just music music music all day every day and

37:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:56 Wilson Harwood i played in other bands too at the time towards

37:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:57 Wilson Harwood the end of it and then like the band broke up after five years which was traumatic and awful and terrible but like everybody it happens bandmates wanted to go in a different direction and i was at a crossroads and so i moved to nashville and i was trying to decide between nashville and la and i just basically was like nashville feels more correct it was like an intuition

38:18 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

38:18 Wilson Harwood thing it

38:19 Luke F. Walton yeah,

38:19 Wilson Harwood was totally not super well thought out and uh and i packed up everything left and like went from what you were talking about before like the music like the cello musician i was that person in colorado i was like making an immediate an okay living i thought as a i was a full-time musician i was like teaching i was gigging i was playing corporate gigs i was playing in a band you know our band was starting to get some decent checks after five years of grinding

38:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

38:44 Wilson Harwood Um, and I threw it all away and moved to Nashville and started from zero. And I literally was like driving Uber and like, you know, Lyft and walking dogs and it was insane. And then at the time I was going from the musician to wanting to get into music production. And so I finally had a rental with an extra bedroom and I bought some acoustic.

39:10 Wilson Harwood acoustic treatment for the first time and I was like yes finally I've got like a studio and

39:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

39:15 Wilson Harwood I started co-writing in Nashville and that co-writing led to learning how to produce because I was really interested in sync licensing at the time too so this was 2016

39:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

39:26 Wilson Harwood sort of idea of timeline and sync licensing kind of had already peaked and I was kind of riding the downward trend I didn't realize at the time but I was riding that down that downward trend yeah but you know and I just but the sync licensing thing was a blessing in disguise because it led to really having a reason to try to make my production better you

39:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, totally.

39:50 Wilson Harwood know I was like man I got

39:50 Luke F. Walton You're

39:51 Wilson Harwood to get better I'm

39:51 Luke F. Walton competing.

39:51 Wilson Harwood trying I got to sound like like yeah i gotta sound like the latest pop track or this track or so

39:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

39:56 Wilson Harwood i kept trying to get better and then somewhere along like after a year or two doing that i was like i'm gonna start a business as a producer and so i started trying to get clients all the while i'm working terrible jobs everywhere you know making no money and uh and then you know eventually buy my first house and then i went and built that studio and when i built that studio

40:21 Wilson Harwood And that's when I did the whole DIY soundproofing thing. I was like, you know what? I should make a course on

40:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah,

40:28 Wilson Harwood how to

40:28 Luke F. Walton yeah, yeah.

40:28 Wilson Harwood do. And I was like, again, right as courses were going down, caught the end of that wave.

40:34 Luke F. Walton Ha ha. Totally. You used to print money,

40:38 Wilson Harwood Yeah,

40:38 Luke F. Walton I know.

40:39 Wilson Harwood they used to print money and I started was like, the course didn't do so hot, but it led me on the business of I can teach people. about sound proofing and how to build this studio and

40:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:49 Wilson Harwood I was so naive man I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I that's what you need you need to not know what you're doing and

40:55 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

40:56 Wilson Harwood I just kept I'm so freaking stubborn so I just kept going kept going kept banging my head against the wall and then finally um I took a course with Brian Hood who does this like profitable producer thing and whatever and he really helped me understand that hey man if you're gonna turn this into a business you need to charge like a high level fee you

41:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:15 Wilson Harwood need to start go go away from the courses screw the courses that's 2020 2019 territory man it's 2020 it's like you missed it again

41:24 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:24 Wilson Harwood uh like you know anyways i uh so i did that and that's where it started evolving and then it became like hey we want construction plans i was like i can figure out construction plans that's easy i can do that again naive had no idea what i was doing and then fast forward you know several years later and here i am you know using revit top tier architectural program i've got a team of three people got employees you

41:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:49 Wilson Harwood know we're like and it's just crazy i could have never expected this to happen you know the downside is i don't have as much time for music but i have a family i have two kids like and i'm making time for music here and there but it's just crazy right

42:04 Luke F. Walton You're having the impact though of. creating more music in the world just indirectly you

42:09 Wilson Harwood indirectly yeah exactly yeah

42:11 Luke F. Walton know so

42:11 Wilson Harwood a music adjacent

42:12 Luke F. Walton it's like yeah but you're you're in it still and i think that's

42:17 Wilson Harwood i'm in it i don't have a day job yeah

42:18 Luke F. Walton right you don't have a day job you control your future you control your time and you get to be providing the like raw material and the sense of place for all of these different musicians so you have a different kind of like scale and impact because everything that everybody does in every one of the studios that you help to exist you get a little bit of credit for all of that you

42:40 Wilson Harwood yeah it's it's

42:41 Luke F. Walton know

42:41 Wilson Harwood super true yeah it's just like a producer you're

42:43 Luke F. Walton right

42:43 Wilson Harwood kind of like behind the scenes but you're having this subtle artistic impact in a weird way and for me personally like one part of the story i left out was that i studied architecture in college for

42:53 Luke F. Walton Oh,

42:54 Wilson Harwood like yeah

42:54 Luke F. Walton cool. Yeah.

42:55 Wilson Harwood I

42:55 Luke F. Walton isn't. think Okay.

42:56 Wilson Harwood it was a year and I really wanted to double major but you know music school was like it was like going to high school there was like eight classes a day it was ridiculous and uh I just couldn't physically take the classes at the same time so I had to choose and I chose music and what's happened is I've almost gone full circle I get to do do architecture on

43:16 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:17 Wilson Harwood my terms and

43:18 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:18 Wilson Harwood design and music in a way I would have never imagined and

43:23 Luke F. Walton Totally.

43:23 Wilson Harwood so it's actually kind of perfect for me you know in this really cool way and like the idea of touring and like doing music right now as an artist which is what I originally wanted to do I'm kind of like I couldn't even imagine that at like this age and like with a family and trying to be on TikTok every day I was like maybe I'm just It just all works out right, you

43:44 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah

43:45 Wilson Harwood know?

43:45 Luke F. Walton totally totally and it doesn't stop you from still making music it's just it changes the relationship and it changes kind of your impact in a different way that's the same thing like talking to mastering engineers that wanted to be an artist very interesting like similar arc where now they are just the final step the final ears to like

44:05 Luke F. Walton a thousand x what they could have possibly made themselves because they're working on multiple songs a day uh

44:10 Wilson Harwood I know.

44:11 Luke F. Walton and they're like well you know net impact into the music industry is like way higher is this the only way i could have had this kind of impact is if i was like the beatles so

44:21 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

44:21 Luke F. Walton it's like you

44:22 Wilson Harwood Yeah, that's a good idea

44:22 Luke F. Walton know and

44:22 Wilson Harwood to

44:22 Luke F. Walton that's

44:22 Wilson Harwood just go

44:23 Luke F. Walton just

44:23 Wilson Harwood with

44:23 Luke F. Walton like one

44:23 Wilson Harwood the spinach.

44:23 Luke F. Walton master it feels a similar way of like mixing or producing or whatever is that yeah you're you're able to take your taste and contribute it to a bunch of different lenses of

44:33 Luke F. Walton creativity and um i find a lot of joy in it even if you don't get the credit or the stage time or whatever the spotlight i think the overall impact that you have in terms of like making decisions that other people were not ready to make yet in their artistic career is just super satisfying and fulfilling because you're able to kind of like take them up probably what if they were just on their own doing diy with where they could have been in like five ten years you could just go we'll get you right there we'll give you that vibe that you'll eventually grow to and you might be able to do it on your own but like

45:01 Luke F. Walton Like, I feel like same thing for what you're doing of, yeah, you could go DIY, but I think about this every single day. Hire me and let me help you skip all of this because I'm obsessed with this and maybe you're not.

45:14 Wilson Harwood exactly yeah and that's like a big adult decision that's hard for people like me and maybe you to make and

45:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

45:21 Wilson Harwood maybe a lot of people on this podcast that are so used to doing it all yourself one thing i've learned is like part of my superpower was that like being being able to do

45:30 Luke F. Walton Right.

45:30 Wilson Harwood a lot of things but I think over time what's cool is that you start to hone what your real talents are like

45:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

45:39 Wilson Harwood you start you're you we're all born with like i truly believe everyone's born with like all these incredible talents but sometimes we force those talents down a hole like for example right now it's probably hey i want to just be a super famous artist have tons of streams on spotify and be super successful on tiktok like very stereotypical

45:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

45:59 Wilson Harwood but let's just say that

46:00 Luke F. Walton sure.

46:00 Wilson Harwood that's your

46:00 Luke F. Walton Sure.

46:00 Wilson Harwood goal and

46:01 Luke F. Walton Yep.

46:01 Wilson Harwood um um and then you know like give it 10 years of trying to do that and then you're like man the I didn't get the feedback from the world I was hoping for and

46:11 Luke F. Walton Mm

46:11 Wilson Harwood it's not necessarily something you did wrong it's more that your talents were probably not fully aligned with that goal you were trying to force down your throat and one

46:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

46:20 Wilson Harwood of the things I I don't know I feel like I don't have enough wisdom yet to fully say this with confidence but I think there's a lot of people in the music industry that you that are really good at like not stepping back and being like is this definitely the path i want to take you

46:34 Luke F. Walton Yep.

46:35 Wilson Harwood know like can i course correct and not feel shame and guilt or can i also not not have that buyer's remorse of like oh i've put 10 years on this there's no way i can stop i need to put another 20 even if it kills me and i'm talking more to myself because i'm

46:53 Luke F. Walton Uh

46:53 Wilson Harwood like that's

46:53 Luke F. Walton -huh. Yeah.

46:54 Wilson Harwood kind of the way i felt and like i'm glad that i course corrected every time that i did so i think there's like a a real deep level to following your bliss or following your path and like getting the feedback from the world because like like you said if you're um doing your craft and people

47:16 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:16 Wilson Harwood are paying you 200 bucks a song to mix like that's feedback that means

47:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:20 Wilson Harwood you're worth something but

47:21 Luke F. Walton Right.

47:21 Wilson Harwood if people

47:22 Luke F. Walton And that go

47:22 Wilson Harwood aren't paying

47:22 Luke F. Walton up.

47:22 Wilson Harwood you anything that's

47:23 Luke F. Walton Yeah, exactly.

47:24 Wilson Harwood feedback it's like either

47:25 Luke F. Walton Or if

47:25 Wilson Harwood got to

47:26 Luke F. Walton they get don't

47:26 Wilson Harwood better

47:26 Luke F. Walton come back.

47:26 Wilson Harwood yeah

47:26 Luke F. Walton If they

47:27 Wilson Harwood if they

47:27 Luke F. Walton don't

47:27 Wilson Harwood don't

47:27 Luke F. Walton come back

47:27 Wilson Harwood come back

47:27 Luke F. Walton for record two, that's a sign that you really want to do such great work and have them really feel like you were such a collaborator in an elevator that everything they do from thenceforth, they're like that guy. or

47:41 Wilson Harwood Yeah,

47:41 Luke F. Walton girl whatever

47:41 Wilson Harwood yeah.

47:41 Luke F. Walton like the retention piece i think is the biggest signal you could possibly have in this industry specifically if you're doing like services for people they come back to you for the next one that means Everything to me, like

47:54 Wilson Harwood yeah

47:54 Luke F. Walton that's

47:54 Wilson Harwood yeah that's

47:55 Luke F. Walton a business.

47:56 Wilson Harwood a business and so like that's what i'm saying is like if you've got this like feedback loop uh and you're doing well then that's awesome and like for me with the production side i think i did it for five years and or so or a little less and i was like i'm just so exhausted by this and it was

48:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

48:14 Wilson Harwood a good thing just kind of like tell be honest and be like i don't need to like force this like i can kind of course correct and shift so that that's sort of i think my biggest takeaway uh from that arc and then i'm so grateful that i played in bands and like had those experiences but it didn't need to be the full career so

48:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

48:31 Wilson Harwood it's like a storybook you know you have these chapters and it's okay if it's Not the perfect thing you thought it was going to be.

48:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah, exactly. But it's such a funny tension, and I agree with it. stubbornness plus ability to pivot like in order to do this because this is just by nature an entrepreneurial industry is like you kind of have to be navigating both of those channels because it's so easy to give up too fast it's

48:54 Wilson Harwood Yep.

48:54 Luke F. Walton also so easy to double down on something you should be doubling down on and being able to do both at the same time and knowing which way and it's okay if you go too far one or the other for a little while but it's so easy to also get diluted by the resistance to the thing you should be should be doing like

49:09 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

49:10 Luke F. Walton that personal procrastinating or not being stubborn enough or not being gutsy enough but

49:16 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

49:17 Luke F. Walton that can that can go the opposite way too is you could go down a path and waste a lot of years when something else is screaming at you like people will pay you for this people value this or try this genre or you should learn this instrument or whatever yeah

49:30 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

49:30 Luke F. Walton it's navigating yeah

49:32 Wilson Harwood It is navigating. And I think that's what's so hard about it is that grit that we're talking about is such a such an asset in the music industry. industry and

49:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah, it is.

49:42 Wilson Harwood in entrepreneur in general i

49:43 Luke F. Walton Totally.

49:44 Wilson Harwood mean you cannot do this if you don't have grit like you just cannot um

49:47 Luke F. Walton There's so much BS. You

49:49 Wilson Harwood but

49:49 Luke F. Walton gotta wade through so much crap.

49:50 Wilson Harwood through so much and you just gotta be obsessive but I think maybe in Nashville, I

49:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

49:58 Wilson Harwood noticed that I started running into a lot more people that were the other type that were the man you hang on probably a little too long, maybe I don't know. I don't know, you know, I don't want to judge for you. But like, I don't know if this is what you should have kept doing for like year after year. So it just depends, you know, like Yeah. what you're trying to do. But there's definitely a balance.

50:16 Wilson Harwood And I think it's like the checking in with yourself, the being real, the like noticing.

50:22 Luke F. Walton I mean, LA's got a lot of the talkers. rockers the people

50:24 Wilson Harwood hmm

50:25 Luke F. Walton that have got

50:25 Wilson Harwood are

50:25 Luke F. Walton big

50:26 Wilson Harwood you in la

50:26 Luke F. Walton goals

50:26 Wilson Harwood you're

50:26 Luke F. Walton no i'm in san diego i left

50:28 Wilson Harwood in san

50:28 Luke F. Walton la i was in la for nine nine years and i came back home i'm from san diego i like actually being down here because i i'm able to focus more and i also kind of have a different kind of culture it's more laid back but i'm also more on my own i have a little bit more space than i would up there but there's this weird kind of thing that i i find whenever i go back up to la of a lot of people that have huge plans but low execution and i would rather i'd way rather have the opposite of

50:52 Luke F. Walton of like too small of plans and too much execution it's

50:55 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

50:56 Luke F. Walton like that and that's kind of that's kind of my style and how i grew my career was like i'm just gonna make a song every week like

51:02 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

51:02 Luke F. Walton and some of them would be good and some of them all release and some of them all figure out what to do and it's like that that was enough to get me from zero to one and like from there now it's got to change like i can't just keep doing that because i'll go crazy but like and also so will my fans like people were like you gotta

51:18 Wilson Harwood you gotta stop you're on my discover weekly or whatever my release radar every freaking week like i don't even want to listen to you anymore like

51:24 Wilson Harwood Yeah, go away uh yeah. but but i i would way rather somebody that's like micro than macro or scoped than and i feel like as a you know construction like i feel like that's the ultimate it's like you have to have both you have to like know your plan but permitting and managing and contractors and subcontractors and suppliers all

51:47 Luke F. Walton all of that complex web is very much like a producer on a big project you're dealing with budgets

51:52 Wilson Harwood oh

51:52 Luke F. Walton and

51:52 Wilson Harwood my

51:52 Luke F. Walton all this kind god of it's can

51:53 Wilson Harwood so similar you know what it's most

51:54 Luke F. Walton you

51:54 Wilson Harwood similar

51:54 Luke F. Walton imagine well

51:55 Wilson Harwood to it's

51:55 Luke F. Walton yeah interesting

51:56 Wilson Harwood most similar to being an independent artist because

51:58 Luke F. Walton interesting

51:59 Wilson Harwood like yeah because like the transition from that to like what i'm doing now maybe didn't feel quite as insane because i was like oh like managing 100 million plates in the air sure i've been doing that my whole life you know um so yeah i've i

52:15 Luke F. Walton Right.

52:15 Wilson Harwood think there's some similarities to that and then the more mature me is like oh yeah we're building systems we're building a business we're you know really really really trying to say okay this is like a very high level design firm and we're the cream of the crop and and you know if you want to work with us like awesome because we're gonna just like crush this design for you but all

52:37 Luke F. Walton Yes.

52:38 Wilson Harwood that takes like that intensity the focus the the zeroing in on your on your thing and kind of like pull it all back to what we were talking about earlier like one of the biggest things that probably is a superpower in the music industry in general is being able to say i am the expert like i am really really really good at this one thing and and you can't be that person overnight like you said 10 years you

53:01 Wilson Harwood just minimum

53:01 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah

53:02 Wilson Harwood probably 20 years and you start to really be like okay sweet it's like and it's easier for me because soundproofing is not a very competitive space but in music like if you're trying to be the expert producer like that's hard

53:13 Luke F. Walton yeah

53:13 Wilson Harwood and

53:14 Luke F. Walton that's hard yeah

53:14 Wilson Harwood mix engineer like are you kidding me and then mastering engineer like oh man even

53:18 Luke F. Walton yeah and

53:19 Wilson Harwood harder

53:19 Luke F. Walton they're moving targets those that is not genre isn't everything change yeah

53:23 Wilson Harwood yeah but like when you meet somebody out at a show or in public and you say hey i like mix i master i produce i'm an so I'm an artist I also do some video work on the side like you

53:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

53:32 Wilson Harwood know and I'm

53:33 Luke F. Walton yeah,

53:33 Wilson Harwood like it's hard to pinpoint that person down but

53:36 Luke F. Walton right

53:37 Wilson Harwood if you come out and you say hey man I'm just like I just master and I'm like I love it and I'm really really good at it then

53:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

53:45 Wilson Harwood the person is gonna be like man who should master my record oh yeah what about that guy that said like that's all he does every day um

53:50 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I hear you.

53:51 Wilson Harwood and i'm like that's something i learned in nashville was like you know you can't stand out in nashville if you're an everything person even though we all are but

54:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah, that's a good point though.

54:02 Wilson Harwood but you

54:02 Luke F. Walton I hear you.

54:02 Wilson Harwood you like you say to people like hey this is what i do and for me it's like okay i designed soundproof studios like that's what i do man like i may make some music on the side and stuff but i'm not gonna tell you that like i'm gonna I'm gonna tell you what I do and that's been super helpful over the years

54:19 Luke F. Walton super good advice and

54:20 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

54:20 Luke F. Walton really uh i think against the crowd but i also like the duality that tension still of where you came from to get there

54:28 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

54:28 Luke F. Walton was coming from a lot of different places and you do kind of need to start from a lot of different places because one of them's probably going to be more successful than the other ones monetarily retention there's like a bunch of different ways that you can measure that success but if people keep coming back to you to do video it's like maybe you should lead with video

54:44 Wilson Harwood Yeah.

54:45 Luke F. Walton or whatever, whatever that might be, but you can start broad. but ruthlessly narrow as

54:50 Wilson Harwood yes yeah

54:51 Luke F. Walton you go it's

54:52 Wilson Harwood exactly that

54:53 Luke F. Walton cool if i oh

54:53 Wilson Harwood is such the way to do it like if i could go back and do it all over again that's a hundred percent what i would be trying to do is like i would do a bunch of stuff at first and i would always try to do what

55:02 Luke F. Walton i yeah

55:02 Wilson Harwood like because if you don't like it you'll never be

55:04 Luke F. Walton that's

55:04 Wilson Harwood the best at

55:05 Luke F. Walton a magnet

55:05 Wilson Harwood it yeah

55:05 Luke F. Walton too you know

55:06 Wilson Harwood you'll never be you'll never be the expert that people want if you're not obsessed with it so like you're like i'm freaking i actually generally do love video and i'm like if i would with get it started over i might have been like oh yeah instead of like production maybe i'm gonna like really focus in on shooting videos in cool studio spaces which

55:24 Luke F. Walton Totally.

55:24 Wilson Harwood i always thought would be a really fun career and

55:26 Luke F. Walton That would so be so

55:26 Wilson Harwood like

55:27 Luke F. Walton great.

55:27 Wilson Harwood um

55:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

55:28 Wilson Harwood you know and you just obsess over it get really good at it and before you know it you're the guy everyone's talking to or girl everyone's saying like hey you know we gotta call this person

55:38 Luke F. Walton Yeah. That's

55:39 Wilson Harwood So,

55:39 Luke F. Walton great.

55:40 Wilson Harwood yeah. Anyways, man, this has been fun.

55:42 Luke F. Walton So this has been super fun. I got one last question if you're

55:45 Wilson Harwood Yeah,

55:45 Luke F. Walton good for

55:45 Wilson Harwood yeah, for

55:45 Luke F. Walton it on sure. time. Okay, sweet. So the show is called Love Music More. This segment is called Love Music Why. I've got one question for you, Wilson. Why do you love music?

55:53 Wilson Harwood Oh my gosh, yeah. Man, I love music because it's been the one thread, consistent thread through my life that always anchors me back to something.

56:07 Wilson Harwood bigger than me but also such a part of me and it's like whether it's for money or for you know learning music lessons like any period in my life if i think about music and i come back to it it's like it's this thread that's always consistent and if i can connect to that i'm like that's why i love music yeah

56:29 Luke F. Walton Beautiful. Where can people get in touch? Where can people hire you?

56:32 Wilson Harwood man so uh you can go to soundproofyourstudio.com and then like i said i've kind of made myself clear i think on this podcast of like if you're not diy and

56:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

56:42 Wilson Harwood you're feeling pretty serious about it um i would recommend reaching out for a soundproof planning call um so you can just go to soundproof your studio.com slash step one that's a capital s step one um or just go to the website soundproof your studio.com and you can click on the buttons there it'll take you to my calendar and i'll speak with you for 30 minutes and we can talk about your project yeah

57:04 Luke F. Walton Love it. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. That was

57:08 Wilson Harwood thank

57:08 Luke F. Walton fun.

57:08 Wilson Harwood you this is fun