Ask the Expert: Rick Coughlin - Sound Check & Quality, The Grove Studio Way (Encore)

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Hey, hey, welcome amplifying you family. I'm Michelle Abraham, your host. I'm here today with a really cool guest Rick Coughlin. Rick is one of the founders of Grove Studios, Grove Studios are popping up in all sorts of really fun places. And they're here to make podcasts is life's easier. We're gonna dive more into the history of Grove Studios and all of Oak Grove Studios, but I wanted to introduce you to Rick and Rick, thank you for being with us today.

For sure, really, my pleasure, I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having me.

You're welcome. Well, and we were connected by a dear friend of ours and other fellow podcaster Dan McPherson. So want to give out a shout out to Dan for always connecting with amazing people, and always connecting me with amazing people that he meets. So I know this is the first time we've actually talked about you know, I've heard a lot about you guys. And I know Dan's a good friend of your guys's as well, so shout out to Dan McPherson on this episode for the connection.

Yeah, for sure. Big shout out to Dan. He's, he's an amazing connector and an amazing business coach for us. You know, he, we've been working with him for a number of years. And he's really helped us work through a lot of recoveries that we had to come come through, to get to the point where we are. And he's really helped us grow. So it's cool to meet other people that he's been involved with.

Absolutely. Dan and I met when we were traveling in Asia last year speaking, and we've just connected and just really help support each other's businesses. Dan has been a huge support in my business, and we've launched his podcast. So guys, go check out his podcast, dreams are real. So Rick, I want to dive into Grow studios. Tell us a little bit about growth studios. What's the history behind it? Why you started it? And what's the vision?

Sure. Yeah, that's yeah, there's, there's a lot. There's a lot embedded in there, but I'll try to I'll try to be as brief as possible. You know, I've been kind of a not kind of, I guess, a long lifelong musician. Going way back. But I've, you know, professionally done it for for 25 years, you know, performing on stages, both in Michigan and regionally. But you know, that that musician side of me has always been there, I've done other work to supplement that, that kind of income. But you know, my passions really do lie in music. And they also lie in education. I was a teacher for 10 years, teaching seventh and eighth grade. And, you know, did music related stuff with students, although I didn't actually teach music, but I taught English. But either way, you know that that passion never left. And you know, one of the things that I always saw musicians struggle with was adequate rehearsal space. You know, we really just saw a problem that existed around us, and we finally decided to solve it as many musicians No, rehearsal spaces are either non existent, and you're stuck in a basement or a garage, or, you know, somebody's mom's basement or somebody's grandma's garage or really, whatever you can find. And then from from, from a sound quality standpoint, those are never very ideal situations. And the hours can be very difficult to access many musicians. You know, while there are 1.4 million registered musicians with ASCAP and BMI in the United States, and then many more because there's about 25 million SoundCloud, creators and uploaders. So that's around the world. So obviously, many people are producing music. Many people struggle with adequate rehearsal space. And the other challenge is when there is rehearsal space, often there is a cost barrier. Depending on your real estate market, it can be incredibly expensive to rent or lease out of space, or even purchase to space and then build, you know, soundproofing scenarios and everything else. And so, you know, we, we dealt with that for a long time and rehearsal spaces would start up, they would, you know, fail and falter. And we were really just looking for a way to make it sustainable, affordable, annex accessible for musicians, and, and DJs and producers and podcasters and audio engineers, obviously, their recording studios, but that's a very different thing than a rehearsal space. So we decided to start Grove Studios and put everything that we saw as a need in into the concept. Yeah, I

love that you guys have combined like the rehearsal space and the recording studios, together under one roof, which is kind of unusual. And I would imagine now with like real estate, and like houses, even like, they're so close together now, like, it's really hard to. I mean, it's even hard for me to record podcasts in my house, there's too many people, there's too much things, I'm actually in a co working space right now, which is not equipped for the proper sounding and looks very echoey. Ya know, but ya know, it's really, it's really challenging to find that space. So I think that's a really you guys have found that really perfect, like mixture of people that really need that. And I saw on Facebook recently that you guys, because of COVID, and things that are going on right now had some outdoor rehearsal space, too. And I really felt that that met that need right now.

Yeah, people are still, you know, people aren't coming back into the studio since since June one and Michigan is, you know, in Phase four, out of five phases of of, you know, I guess you'd call it recovery. But there are definitely people that still don't feel 100% comfortable being indoors, particularly where singing is going on and that sort of thing, or people don't, you know, maybe feel comfortable wearing masks in that situation. So, yeah, we have an outdoor space. It's, it's it's basic, but it's working for some people, we've already had some rentals in that space. So it can't be It can't be that that space can't be open 24/7 Like, like our indoor spaces. But we're located in an industrial park area. And so there's no residential, really to bother people. But we didn't think having people outside rehearsing, you know, at two in the morning, would sit well with with the local authorities either. So,

absolutely. And I'm sure being in Michigan, too. This is going to be a seasonal.

Yeah, absolutely. I think no, no propane heaters, you know, like they have on patios at restaurants are really going to help out. Yeah, yeah. Go

quarters, get a little ice, I

think, no doubt, no doubt.

That's awesome. So you guys are in one location right now? Or how many locations do you have? Right now

we are we were in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is, you know, just outside of Detroit and Ann Arbor, we're kind of sandwiched in between the two, which is a good location for us. We intend, you know, our headquarters to be here. But our plan is to scale to hundreds of locations around the world, hopefully and using right now, we're not in shipping containers. That's our long term concept for scale, using repurposed shipping containers for our studio units.

Oh, cool. I love that idea. Because then do you think it'd be easy to soundproof shipping containers for like, smaller, denser kind of sounding space?

Yeah, I mean, it turns out that if you take 220 foot, high box, shipping containers, and you smash them together, you get about 320 square feet of a very usable space, which is extremely adequate for bands to rehearse, podcasts to happen DJs to rehearse, and music to be recorded, given the technologies that we have. So my one of my business partners is an architect who specializes in shipping container construction. So we're actually in the engineering phases, final engineering phases of that product and and the sound attenuation and sound proofing, you know, are are somewhat conventional solutions that you might use in in any other space in a traditional stick built building. Cool. That's

great. We live off the grid where I live in my husband's trying to build me like a little studio recording things. I should probably mention him shipping container woodwork. I was great. That was too. It would be too tinny. But if you get the right combination of soundproofing in there that could work.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you one of the things we've discussed actually is, even though this will be a service based business and providing the, you know, the infrastructure and everything else around how people access, we have talked about actually selling the solution for people that are interested in having it, you know, on their property or something like that they have the land or space or means to do it. But, but yeah, you can get incredible sound quality out of a shipping container.

Yeah, that's so cool. I love that. So speaking from a sound quality, and they know that's something that you're passionate about, what are some things that podcasters here's some tips for podcasters on basically sound quality. You've heard a lot of music, a lot of a lot of recordings, and what are some tips you can give our podcasters that are at home that are podcasters want to improve their sound quality?

Yeah, for sure. You know, you can you can get so sound a tenuous a lot of people talk about sound attenuation and sound proofing as if they're the same thing. sound proofing is a much is a very expensive process, professional recording studios, Will, we'll go through that process to get things to keep sound, mostly to keep sound from from coming in. Right, because you're using, you know, high quality microphones that are very sensitive ribbon microphones and two microphones and that kind of thing, to get the best possible sound. And, and that may be the case at home too, right? You might need to block some sound out but but it really could be, you know, as simple and cost effective. As you know, using some thick material or thin, thick blankets to you know, put over windows, for example, if you live in an urban area, for example. You know, from a cost effective standpoint, you can buy acoustic treatments, acoustic foam, you know, and those, those really vary in quality. It's the whole, you get what you pay for kind of thing. So you can go online, and you can find acoustic foam. And you can find really, you know, great deals, you can get home, you know, giant stacks of this stuff, you know, and it'll do something, but it also just depends on the size of the room. But really treating parallel surfaces in in your rooms, whatever room you happen to be in. So that could be using things like sound diffusers, or you know sound, you know, some kind of foam. But But shipping blankets do remarkable things. I've seen some really cool solutions where shipping blankets have been sort of rolled up and kind of creatively attached to walls sort of hanging, to break up those parallel surfaces that we all have in our in our homes in our offices and home offices. But it's really about that it's breaking up the parallel surfaces. Even if you have a hard floor parallel surface if you have a hard ceiling parallel surface. So that's where we get the reverb from when there's nothing diffusing the sound. Right.

So if it's a hard floor and hard ceiling, you wouldn't have something in between there to break that. Yeah. Now,

all of that can get really expensive. And there are some interesting solutions. Without doing all of that. There's there's a product called the chaotic eyeball, which is sort of a foam like solution that wraps around a microphone. That can that can prevent that reverb. So it's it's the idea that you're trading the microphone rather than the space in your in your, in your in your space.

Interesting. I was gonna ask you that because my brother, when he first started podcasting, he had a crate, and you put the foam in the crate and they put the microphone in the crate. Yeah, it's like his head in there. I was like, Yeah, I wonder if that works better than like, because he was in a fishbowl apartment and they, you know, not able to record really well. And it's interesting. I wasn't sure if it was due to this the same with just treating the microphone rather than like the entire room. But if that works,

yeah, I mean, if you're handy, you can certainly build things like that. And and, you know, there are products that clip onto microphone stands that kind of do the same thing. There's like a foam surround. And it'll prevent the sound from going in front of you and bouncing off a wall and coming back. But there is still sound, you know, if there's a wall behind you, you're still going to get that so it might be a combination of things, something like that. And then maybe if the wall is near, behind you treating treating the wall that's near near you. We actually build you know, we've built sound panels before too. I mean, there's certain types of insulation that works best where you can build Old, you know, it's basic wood framing and insulation and some fabric really effective. Using rock wool, and she can get at your local hardware store.

Rock Wall. That's a new one. Right,

right. No, it's actually rock wool. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. The brand name I think is like rock soul. You'll see like, like Home Depot or Lowe's or something like that. But yeah, there's a lot of products like that out there that you can use.

So if we're sitting here facing our microphone in our computer, is it more likely? Is it better to have the sound like a bowl behind in front of us so that we're speaking towards it? Or is it better for behind us?

It depends on whether or not the I think it's, it's really you just want to keep the sound from bouncing around. So if you It depends on if you can you treat the wall in front of you. If you can't, then you want to, you know, get one of one of these products where it'll clip to your microphones stand, for example, and sort of cup around the microphone a little bit. And that would actually have the foam treatment on it. And then if you have a wall behind you, you you could maybe treat that wall. So you, it just depends on your space, but you can certainly treat the wall in front of you. And the wall behind you.

Yeah, I think that's cool. I've seen those things where you put them over your head. It's like, can you put over here? I didn't like you're in the recording space?

Yeah, those are really effective. Really.

They weren't, like they look ridiculous, but I think that's maybe what I need to find a good recording space anywhere.

Yeah, they're, they're a little pricey. You know, but again, if you're handy, you could you could actually build something or an isolation booth, you know, a lot of recording studios have isolation booths. So building, you know, you see it now like in like co working spaces, these sort of ISO booths, where you can step in and have a phone call or something like that. And those are pricey.

Something like that right now. Okay, except for it's like, and it's got, like, glass wall? Yeah, like sliding doors, and then it's when it's very bouncy, so apologizer on one, we're talking about good quality sound today, you know, take my word for it. And I have worked on a project before where I saw the US clothing hangers, like a clothing rack that was like a metal square rack, they could raise it up high, and then they put the moving blankets over top of it and make kind of like a square around the reclaim that that was really great. And, yes, I had ever seen that. That's awesome.

Yeah, I mean, there are lots of things that you can do, you know, on a budget or with things you might even already have around the house, you know, and you can do it inexpensively. But from a cost perspective, the sky is definitely the limit. And also,

like, from a cost perspective. And also like it can be perspective, I think what you guys are doing a Grove Studios is you making it really affordable for us to record podcasts from because there aren't really any many spaces right now that are, you know, they're there that are of quality like that, that are affordable for podcasters that who are just starting out maybe not making a huge return on their podcast at the moment. You know, that bit of investment is it's so worth it. And so that's amazing. I was I can't wait to the day you guys have hundreds of locations everywhere. Just send everyone there, just don't bother getting your home set up. Just go to the studio at our car. It's gonna sound way better.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's that that's the thing, you know, and we and we recognize that, you know, it's not always possible to treat the space that you're in what you might be renting an apartment, you can't really affix anything to the walls, or, you know, you have a family and you have little kids running around. I mean, there's, there's lots of reasons that people need to do their recording elsewhere. I mean, being a music professional of many years, you'd be surprised how little music I actually do in my house from a recording or, you know, professional standpoint, just mainly because of the distractions. There's plenty of things to do around the house. And I I'm much more productive from a professional standpoint, if I'm in a studio environment, and we think that will work for a lot of people.

Absolutely, especially when you've got this solution that works for people. What's your, what's your vision with group studios, rough Sidious? And how far out is that expansion looking?

You know, we talked about our big, hairy, audacious goal and, you know, it's kind of a, that's a 10 year plan. We don't imagine hundreds of locations being able to happen fast. You know, unless we get some kind of amazing investment and, you know, venture partner who you know, sees and parallels our vision And but, you know, that hundreds of locations as a 10 year plan, but certainly, you know, we have a five year plan and a two year plan. And we, you know, we do imagine, you know, having at least three to four more locations within the next three to five years or to two to five years. So, you know, it's, it's the idea, and this is where Dan's coaching comes in, you know, it's like, you can, you can build three locations, and you know, make sure all of your systems and everything is in place, and you do that really well. And you can go from three to 35, you know, very quickly if the investment is there, and the systems are, are proven and working well. So, we think once all of that is worked out, and we've worked out a lot so far, that we can, we can scale fast.

Yeah, that's amazing. And, you know, I opened a co working space back like, seven or eight years ago, before co working spaces were a thing. And I think like, had I been doing it like today, like today would be like a space that has that soundproofing that available for not only just people like musicians and or creative people, but also like video recording, and, you know, podcasting because everyone's doing all this stuff online. And, you know, it's so hard to say, I know I struggled so bad with like places to like, find to record like FM and we're recording Oh, this is either in the forest or somewhere straight. Yeah, I've actually taken my boat and a battery in the middle of the lake and recorded there. Wow, that's awesome. Good. Why we live off the grid. So it's hard to get good Wi Fi. And good sound quality? Yeah, yeah, I know the struggle. So obviously, so convenient to have somewhere to go. Yeah, no doubt. Yes. Amazing. So, Rick, any any last bit of advice for our podcasts or so people who are thinking about podcasting, starting and starting a podcast who have a podcast already? From your years of experiences seeing so many? So many things produce? What any last bit of advice for us?

Yeah, I mean, I I'm, I'm more of an audio expert in terms that in for me, podcasting is actually something I think we're on our sick, we're on like number 60. But we haven't done anything beyond podcasting, doing sort of this live streaming kind of thing to get our feet wet. That's just what felt right to us. I guess if I was giving out any advice, I would say, if you're entertaining doing a podcast, just start. Because there's so many things you learn along the way, just by doing it, that's been the case for us. And we we didn't, you know, maybe this is foolhardy advice, I think it just depends on on what kind of learner you are. I know that that Dan would be listening and chiding me for not having a better plan out of the gate, because he's a magnificent planner. But we were in sort of this emergency situation where we were forced to take our business online, so to speak, because we couldn't be in the studio working with clients and things. So we just went and started doing it. And I just think you can learn a lot that way. Obviously, there's professionals like you to engage with which you and I are going to have an offline conversation about how you can help us with podcasting or, you know, getting our podcast more organized. But certainly sound quality matters. And, you know, there are inexpensive things that you can do out of the gate. If you're in the Detroit area, I'd highly recommend you come to Grove Studios and come to our podcast studio because it's affordable. We have amazing equipment that, you know, would for anyone else be you know, good, you know, $1,500 or more investments. You know, just the mixer alone is you know, five or $600 and then microphones and shock mounts and stands and you know how all this can go and it's built for for people. So we have four microphones, but there's cost to that too. But I'd say quality microphone, definitely have one of those. And you know, you can get a USB microphone that's going to sound really great for you know, 150 bucks out of the gate. Computer microphones not as good right? The built in ones but having a quality one. And then you know treating the room as you can. I think those are the big ones

is a great, that's great advice. And I love what you said about just getting going. Just keep going. We're seeing where it's like if you're not embarrassed by your first few episodes. He's waited too long to do it. He's just gonna you know that perfection comes from the action of doing it and getting more comfortable getting better. We nobody likes to rehear that first few episodes. No, no,

I still can't hear it. I watch it and analyze myself, you know, to scrutinize my skills, but I, I definitely have I still have a long way to go. But after 60 I'm definitely a lot better at it than I was before. And Oh, absolutely. And we talked about it for so many so many years. Oh, we should do a podcast. Yeah, we should really do a podcast. And then COVID hit and we went, we have to do a podcast. And so we just started doing it. And we did it using

as a way to communicate with your audience. Through your podcast.

Yeah, yeah. And really like, and really try to lift up our artists in the community. They're either Southeast Michigan, yeah, yeah, they lost their gigs. They lost their tours, you know, and we're looking for ways to help them monetize for live streams. And, and, and we're trying to do that ourselves. Because I don't think this stuff's going anywhere after COVID I think it'll be just as relevant. But yeah, it's definitely extra important now.

Absolutely. And like, I work with all the speakers too, and like, you know, all their all their engagements are gone. But, you know, find a way to kind of do what you do online. Thank God, I worked online. You know, I can I can imagine, like, how devastating that must have been for a lot of people like, you know, trying to now recreate what you do, but in a different modality for a different kind of audience. And I think musicians especially, it's going to be challenging that streaming in monetizing it to like, oh, my gosh, yeah. Hope there's some new inventions in there. See some new things coming out for them? Because it's gonna be?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are some exciting products and some exciting platforms that are boosting and lifting and gaining more traction. So yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens.

Wow. Yeah, that's crazy. Well, I'm looking forward to following your guys's journey. And, Rick, where can people find out more about grub studios and where you guys are? Your location and everything?

Yeah, so it just Grove Studios, dot space. On on, you know, your web browser. We're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch, for any of those Twitch folks out there. We when we livestream our podcast goes to all those platforms. And we basically just make mistakes in front of everybody until we perfect it.

And how's your following on Twitch going? That's an injury. No.

Yeah, I'm still, you know, Twitch is an interesting place. I mean, it's a gamer platform, largely. So, you know, we've had some, our our biggest interactions have been when we had a, we had a DJ that goes by the name of vest and Tyler, do a show with us. And he he uses chip to chip tune is the genre of EDM that he does. And so it's got a lot of video game sounds in it. And he's already pretty popular on Twitch. So we got a lot of traction that way. But I wouldn't say we have a very big Twitch following or anything like that yet. We're still kind of learning that platform. It's pretty unique. Yeah. It's unique. You know, it's unique. It's cool. I

think we're there yet. Yeah, maybe?

Yeah, it is a lot, a lot of opportunities over there, I think. But it's really challenging when you were on YouTube, too. So if you want to see any of our podcasts or our streaming performances, we stream up to YouTube as well.

Awesome. And you guys have a different domain different YouTube, you so Grove Studios, on YouTube.

It's just Yeah, grow. I mean, you can search for Grove Studios on YouTube. But if you go to the website, there's links to all of our social media platforms there. So it's just Grove Studios dot space. Perfect.

Awesome. Well, we'll look forward to catching up with you again, and seeing the progress so you guys are making them making this podcasters life so much easier. So thank you. And I can look forward to chatting with you guys about your podcasts. So thank you very much for being here with us today.

My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity to talk to your audience.

So really, Alright Amplifyou family. Until next time, be safe out there and get your podcast launched.