The Sound of Your Imagination
What happens when you combine an award-winning composer and a talented multi-
instrumentalist and songwriter? You get Paul Jones and Chris Robbins, the duo behind Auralation. The pair met in 2000 and have been forwardly developing their company ever since.
The story behind the name Auralation is simple: “aural” meaning “sound” and “imagination.” Auralation is the sound of your imagination—but Chris jokes that there was just a sale on vowels that day.
Their business has had several locations including the Old City and Market Square, but Jones and Robbins are most excited about their current spot in South Knoxville.
“One of the reasons we’re really excited about the space in South Knox is that we, for the first time, are able to record bands, artists, and songwriters. It’s a passion of ours and it’s something that we love to do,” says Jones. “It’s great to be in a space that inspires good music.”
Studio A is 1,000 square feet and gives Auralation the ability to push technological bounds by hosting larger music ensembles and filming music videos and performances for artists’ social media.
The location includes a specialized “Dante” network, with which different instrumentalists, artists, and vocalists can be in different rooms working together simultaneously.
In addition to specializing in music and audio recordings, Auralation has built a Production Music Library that can be heard on shows such as American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, Toy Box, and much more. Auralation has also worked with production companies such as Warner Brothers, CBS, and Hallmark to remotely record dialogue for movies and television.
They have worked with many companies to produce jingles and commercials, and now podcasts.
“Podcasting is something we’re really excited about. We just started a network called the Scruffy Audio Network,” says Jones. The network has nine shows and the topics vary from travel to politics, with their most popular show being about menopause.
Jones and Robbins agree that the most successful podcasts are ones with people interacting over interesting conversation.
They share a passion for music, but through this business have also discovered a passion for teaching. They are excited that they have a multi-use space with the ability to teach high schoolers, college students, and anyone interested in production. “There’s no place to get that training here in town. You can look at YouTube and online courses, but for hands-on it’s really hard to find,” says Jones. The duo is building “Auralation Academy,” which are single and multi-day workshops designed for students to learn and get experience. The available topics include song production, vocal recordings, mixing techniques, setting up home studios, software training, and much more. They are also aiming to match up their current artists as mentors for newer artists.
“Our hope is that we can be a resource for songwriters, people looking to record demos or full bands, people interested in podcasting, or anyone wanting to learn more about music production; that’s who we would like to work with.”
For more information on Auralation’s services and samples of music, visit their website auralation.tv or stop by the studio at either of their two locations.