I'm worried about the current state of how people are learning recording. When I first started tracking myself (and others) out of my home studio, learning how to record on a budget was a difficult process. I scoured the library, reading every book I could find. I bought all the magazines out there that were available to me at the time. I picked up books at Powell's Books, here in downtown Portland, Oregon. I asked other home recordists about equipment choices and what worked best for them. I even started this magazine so that I could ask questions of experienced producers, engineers, and musicians. Every question would usually yield different answers, depending on who I spoke with. One person would tell me a mic "sucked," while the next would extoll its virtues. But these were simply gear and equipment questions. I remember being unsure of how to find proper mic preamp levels, or how to set and use a compressor – things I now do without much thought. Learning recording techniques turned out to be much harder than learning how to simply pick out and purchase the gear.
Along the way I met many people at similar levels to myself, and we'd share tips about techniques, such as parallel compression, mix bus limiting and EQ, and other tricks that felt new to us. Other times I'd be interviewing someone and get an amazing bit of wisdom that would help my next recordings to sound even better. I always felt I'd learned a new skill at the moment I was ready for it. Sometimes I'd feel that I had reached a point of frustration, or plateaued with the techniques I had been using, when magically a comment someone made would send me off on a new journey to develop further as a recording engineer. My early recordings as a hired engineer were usually very simply, and carefully, performed. As I progressed, I built the confidence to commit to tracking techniques, like blending multiple guitar amp mics, compressing drum room mics, or EQing tracks to taste on the way to tape.