chrisharris said:
Let me state that it is AWESOME to receive such support and insight from people who are willing to donate their time and knowledge...like you...chessrock....
I thought my advice was very fitting. I know it may look like I just skimmed over his post and threw out some generic smartass response.

But actually, I paid close attention to his wording. And I thought my response was fitting and relevent.
To get in to any more detail would require a book's worth of stuff . . .
1) Start with proper
mic selection / technique. You get there by experimenting, reading, studying practicing and more practicing. Condensers versus dynamics versus ribbons . . . etc. etc. Harvey's "big thread" in the mic forum is a great place to start for this kind of thing.
Then you move on to
gainstaging. Again, more reading and practice involved there.
2) . . moving on to room accoustics, you'll want to study up on some key terms. Namely
standing waves, flutter echoe, early reflectsions, decay, size, diffusion, absorption . . .
3) You'll also want to develop an understanding of where the various frequencies of the human voice lie; the sibilant range, the plosive range, etc. As well as how to work a multiband or sidechain comp to effectively deal with those ranges . . . you could fill a whole chapter on setting attack/release times and crossover points, I suppose. Again, more reading assignments for you, and more stuff to practice.
And speaking of frequencies . . . I totally forgot, but you're going to want to go back at some point and study the
physics of sound. That's actually a good thing to start out with. It's extremely helpful understanding what sound is . . . how it creates differences in air pressure, peaks and troughs and how all of that relates to the creation of different notes.
. . . And how our ears pass all that stuff on to our brains. That's probably the most important aspect of recording right there. The more you understand how this all relates to the brain and how our brain makes sense of it all . . . then you'll be ready for the big leagues. I'm certainly not there yet, but someday my friend. The more you know about transducers, the more you start to see a bigger picture in all this mess. How the air acts as a medium and how our ears act as transducers for our brains and how our brains act as transducers to our souls. I just made all that up by the way.
Understanding things like Sine Waves and Square waves, harmonics and overtones might be a little more advanced . . . and I could certainly use some brushing up on that stuff as that's easily my weak area. I hate to admit this, but I don't know a sine from a square from an octagon wave.
4) Then, of course, you'll want to practice feeling your way around a paragraphic EQ if you want to get any good at it. Familiarize yourself with things like shelving, notching, "Q" settings, etc. and really get good at knowing how this all affects the sound.
5)Then there's techniques like parallel compression that are popular with vocal mixing -- this might be easy to grasp but trickier in practice; definitely worth exploring. But
compression, in general, is something you'll need to understand and become skilled with if you ever hope to be good with the rap or hip-hop genre. I can't stress that enough.
You'll want to understand attack, release, and ratio setings . . . and something I can't exactly convey in writing, which is "listening" for compression and the effects it has. That's something you just have to hear and learn yourself . . . but think of it in terms of "punch," sustain, and impact. Common non-technical terms we associate with it all. But it all boils down to dynamics . . . and dynamics are where it's at.
Think of it like this . . . if you could look at sound, the dynamics would be like it's texture or symetry.
If you could hold sound, then the dynamics would most certainly determine it's eleasticity . . . it's density . . . it's consistancy . . . even it's viscosity.
Have I gotten in to the difference between opto and VCA compression yet? No? How about knee? Average/peak? Do I even want to get in to limiting just yet, or should that be another chapter?
Alright, I'm definitely going to want to get in to reverb at some point. This is a tough one, because there are a lot of spacial and directional cues involved this -- where a voice is going to sit in a 3-dimensional spectrum will be greatly effected by the pre-delay time, so we'll want to get in to that. Then there's diffusion and decay time . . . all of which should occupy at least one good, solid chapter describing them and what their effects are on the perceived size of the accoustic space you're trying to convey or create an illusion for.
And I haven't even gotten in to the creative aspect of it all. Maybe / sort of.
Man, I'm tired already.
Just get a book or something.
