Regardless of how long you’ve been in the business, there’s always room for improvement. Here are some tips to help your hearing, career, and maybe even blood pressure while in the recording studio.

Praise The Lowered
Work at lower volume levels. If the level must be up, get your sounds, then insert your earplugs, checking the sound once in a while at lower levels. There is nothing in the recording studio as important as your hearing.

Longevity in the recording industry means good hearing for decades to come. Plus the loud level might wake up the producer.

Be Consistent
Quality is no accident. Success comes from working every day at your craft. Getting good results every day requires hard work and dedication. You are responsible for keeping the session running smoothly, including setting up the control room, choosing the microphones, organizing the signal flow, choosing the track layout, getting the sounds and pressing the record button.

Good sounds or bad, the buck stops with the recording engineer. The ultimate goal is to be the recording engineer that everyone wants to use because of your ears, your expertise, your vibe, and your impressive collection of Ramones t-shirts.

Get Musical
Recording music is so much easier if you understand music. Music plays a key role in a vast majority of recordings, so most clients prefer musical engineers. If you don’t play in instrument, buy a guitar or keyboard, and learn some basic songs.

While learning to play an instrument may seem daunting, you don’t need to become a virtuoso player, you just need to grasp musical progressions and changes. If you get musical, you get work.

Be Professional
This is your craft, and you must work at it. I have seen engineers lose gigs because they got wasted and became an idiot. Do what I do. Wait until your day off to start drinking at 7 a.m.