The Kurt Ballou recording lecture was really good. Yesterday and today were pretty dead at work, so I watched most of it. Had to actually go do some work a few times and missed some bits I was genuinely interested in. I went ahead and bought it so I can go back and review some of it in greater detail later. A lot of it was redundant to philosophies and techniques I already share/use, but a good pep talk a refresher. I also picked up some in depth mix ideas that I don't already use, particularly for tom editing. The bits about dealing with clients from a work flow perspective was really useful, because that's something I have really struggled with in the past and is even worse now that I pretty much only record and mix my own bands.
There were a few techniques that I used to do regularly, when I was all outside the box for mixing and somehow abandoned even though they're now actually easier for me to do. So those were kind of "no duh" moments that made me facepalm. His work flow is somewhat different than mine, for practical reasons (facility and gear), but it's always helpful to hear someone who is good at what they do and has a good attitude talk about it. It gets my brain working and gives me some different perspectives, really easy to get running on a rail when you get competent at doing something and stop looking at it with a fresh perspective every time.
Really, more than anything, makes me want to start a new recording session with a band I'm not in. So I can just focus on recording and mixing and not worry about anything but that.
