Do you want to know how to make better recordings? Start by making a lot of bad (or not-quite-perfect) recordings. Yeah, I know this may sound like some tired old adage, but it's true. I know, because I've lived it.
When Elliott Smith and I opened Jackpot! Recording Studio almost 25 years ago, I was definitely a novice recordist. Those early years were somewhat frustrating at times, and I distinctly remember initially spending an inordinate amount of time attempting (luckily, sometimes succeeding) to get decent mixes off my 16-track MCI tape deck. I kept wondering why mixing was so difficult, and what I could do to make the process easier and more successful.
Then, after a few years of constant recording sessions, something in me changed. The most important step was learning to ask questions of the performers. "Can that part be a little less busy?" "Is that bass tone too dark?" "Is this the right tempo for these lyrics?" "What does this part of the song do?" "Can I change your guitar amp settings?" Queries like these became the most important part of my recording toolkit. Getting all the performances and sounds into a good place – long before worrying about the microphones and compressors – helped make the tracking go far better, and sound much clearer as well. I began to make mic choices intuitively, getting better tones on many sources than I had in the past. I started coaching singers through their tracking sessions, making sure that words were pronounced intelligibly and that their mic technique was helping. I'd ask bassists for whole notes at certain parts of a song, or I'd request them to go up an octave when the floor tom came in. I'd restrict the keyboard player's left-hand parts in a busy arrangement. Working with a guiding hand slowly became my own production style.