Justin Parker grew up in a small town called New Richmond, WI. Ever since he was young he always enjoyed playing music. He was first chair in wind ensemble, jazz band, and was captain of the saxophone marching band section. He got several awards for his diligence in the music field, and even took a jazz history class at a local college during high school. Also during that time he started teaching himself guitar, and was obsessed with rock bands such as Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, System of a Down, etc.

He loved music so much that he decided to go to college for his artistic endeavors. First, he decided to go to the McNally Smith College of Music for guitar, and even tried to start a Nirvana tribute band. He decided he didn’t want to go school for guitar, as they were teaching him how to be a stand-in on stage musician, which wasn’t he wanted to learn. He then went onto the Institute of Production and Recording in Minneapolis, where he started learning sound engineering. He decided that this was his calling, but didn’t like the way they taught the subject. So he finally sought out the Masters Recording Institute, now known as the Minneapolis Media Institute. Masters Recording was run by Tom Tucker, who was Prince’s head engineer for 10 years. There he worked with several well known musicians, became a certified Pro Tools operator, and also learned Post Production for film.

After graduating from college in 2010 with a diploma in audio engineering and production, he decided to travel for several years and record off and on during that time. Mostly he focused on getting the musicianship part of it right, and even started busking on the streets whilst traveling to make money for gas and food. He got so bored of standard tuning that he started creating his own alternative tunings just by using his ear. He wrote prolifically in his journals and was constantly coming up with new material whenever the inspiration struck him. During his travels, he ended up interning at the Indigital Recording Studio in Santa Cruz, CA. After settling down in Colorado, he began interning at Augminished Studios in Littleton, CO. He also works at the Renaissance Festival in Larkspur, CO during the summertime as a street musician. He even has his own home recording studio at his residence in Boulder, CO.

The Unknown Variable will be his first artistic endeavor into recording an album that he hopes to be able sell online, and have physical copies to sell at the Renaissance Festival. As he aims to change people’s live through the medium of music, and for each individual to have their own interpretation of what the music means to them. It is his artistic goal in life to help people think outside the box, and to open up their minds to other possibilities. It is his belief that music really can heal the world because it dissolves boundaries between races, classes, creeds, and cultures. It’s like a universal language, in which no matter what language you speak you can understand music. At this current point in time, we all need things that unify us rather than divide us further. Music for him is the glue that binds together humanity and connects us all to one another.

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