Welcome to Moon Door Studio!

Hello there! My name is Rob “owner” of Moon Door Studios.

After putting some thought into this I decided to write and keep a blog on this website. The reason is to share some aspects of the journey with all of you.

This post is going into why and what. You know all those things that lead me into why I ended up doing this. Before I get into that I am going to share some personal stuff…

I am married to my wonderful wife Sara. Together we have an awesome little one, June Moon. Sara and I met in San Francisco when we both lived and worked there. Shortly after we got married we bought a house and move to Oakland California. It was a great place, we had great neighbors, everything was good for us. Then a few things happened that changed our lives for the better.

First, we decided to have children. Second, we both had significant job changes tat allowed us to be able to move.

For me I got into a management position with a new company. My new territory included multiple states with Oregon being one of them. Sara had traveled there before multiple times. I had never been until I started traveling there for work. The funny part about the new job is Sara and I had talked; mostly in passing about moving to the Portland area. After I my interview I called Sara and told her that Portland was going to be a part of my territory and that we could move there. We decided that it wasn’t time yet, June was not even two months old.

Fast forward a couple years we started get a little nostalgic about our time in San Francisco. Where we lived in San Francisco was very walkable, tons of things to do around town. It was easy for us to experience things. In Oakland, we found ourselves driving more. Getting groceries started to become a chore, drawing straws as to who who end up going. We started talking about Portland again.

Sara and I took a weekend trip to Oregon, just the two of us. We checked out different cities had a good time. WE just kept coming back to Portland. It had everything we wanted. A lot of places to walk, parks we can bring June to, outdoor activities (I’m and indoor person), fun neighborhoods with housing we could afford. After that trip, we were pretty quick to decide it was the right move for the family. There was something else for me…

In my younger days, I played music a lot, played shows; you know the cool thing to do when you were in your late teens/early 20’s. The thing I liked more, was recording music. I remember using my old Tascam 4 track tape recorder, making and recording music either by myself or my friend Ben. Or playing around with Fruity Loops (it’s now called FL Studio). Not having anything to work with and just trying to get the best sounding most creative stuff with what we had. In short I found I liked the recording process a lot more than the playing music live (I always liked making music). The other thing I was really into and I loved doing was making home movies with my friends. Now fast forward 15 years or so.

About a month before June was born my brother Mike decided to come visit us in Oakland for a few days. When we were deciding what we wanted to do, Mike wanted to record some music. It had been years since I had done anything but I thought sure why not. So I started researching making music in a bedroom and man I went down a rabbit hole. Next thing you know I have Pro Tools, trying to figure out modern recording on the fly. Then it became Virtual Instruments, and oh man what fun. Then it was Maschine and all the cool things we could do. Basically I became hooked again and I would just keep adding to this…

Now back to the move from Oakland. Sara knew that I wanted a space I could be creative and have my outlets. So as we were looking at houses as couples do we would share thoughts and ideas. Sara wanted a deck, I wanted a space I could record music. At first I was thinking about having part of a basement be the recording space. Then I would think about if I am too loud for the family, nobody would win in that scenario. Then we came across the perfect house with a detached garage just the perfect size, so we moved forward.

After a few months after we got a little settled in it was time to start the process of turning the garage into a space I could play drums, practice guitar and record some music. The date in my head was ready my May 9, that was my birthday and it was decided I would get the old band back together for a few days to record at least a song. So in a week with a lot of help from my dad during one of the visits, we turned the grace into a music studio.

I continued to make tweaks and still do. Having those two out and making music I was super hooked. It was family, work and studio. Thinking about improvements I can make, equipment I needed and I just started adding to it. Now it has become turning my hobby and passion into something more…