Is VR the future of recording? Justin talked about keeping his studio The Hallowed Halls fully booked through 2020 by offering video and VR production for bands, how to keep your family while making records, why your headphone mixes suck, and spoons!

My guest today is Justin Phelps chief engineer and designer of the Hallowed Halls recording studios in Portland OR. He began his career in 1996 at San Fransisco’s famed Coast Recorders where he worked as a house engineer and received considerable guidance from a chief engineer/producer John Cuniberti and studio owner/gear guru Dan Alexander as well as working at some of the Bay Areas finest studios including The Plant, Prairie Sun, Studio 880, Tiny Telephone and Studio D. 

In 2004 he acquired the lease for one of the more historic spaces in San Francisco, Hyde Street Studio C which he restored to its former glory and ran for the next 5 years as one of the busiest rooms in San Francisco when he met his wife Deanna and started his family. 

With the birth of their first daughter, they relocated to Portland Oregon where he founded Cloud City Sound a multi room facility with a busy mastering suite serving many regional and international until 2016 when he opened The Hallowed Halls located in a 5500 square foot, historic, turn of the century library where the building’s natural acoustics made for an ideal recording studio site. 

Since then, they have been cranking records out for a wide variety of American and International acts, hosting a constant stream of events benefiting the local music and arts community and dabbling in new recording directions. The most prominent of these would be music video production. 

The Covid 19 era has seen a particularly high spike in combined music and video as a result of the severe limitations placed on live performance. Necessity is the mother of invention and Justin is currently modifying The Hallowed Halls to facilitate concert performances and multi camera shoots including VR concerts in Studio A’s main hall. 

Through a partnership with a strong concert streaming distribution network, the hope is to use this to get the lifelong patrons of our studios back to work and to find new creative outlets for the music we create. So far it’s working. 

Thanks so much to John Cuniberti for making our introduction!

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Additional podcast editing and production by:
Brayden Stremming
Vlad Vasilcenko
Jon Richardson