How much music would a musician make if a musician could make music? Today the "In" thing to do is to visit your music center and buy some recording equipment. At home you'll make recordings of yourself and friends and make more, and make more... You'll be getting hands on practice in recording and in mixing and you may even think you're getting good at it.

But after months of this activity, how much training or ability have you attained? And my answer would be "Not nearly as much as a student at Recording Institute of Detroit in the same amount of time...; not nearly as much ability as I attained in the same amount of time at the recording school I trained at."

My school was Hitsville, U.S.A. in the mid 1960's, in Detroit. This was the recording studio of what would become the largest independent record company in the world, Motown Records. I didn't earn a certificate or diploma, instead I got a check every two weeks. More importantly I learned and became good at the necessary skills of the recording arts, very quickly. Why was this a lot more effective learning experience than the new home project studio engineer/producer of today?

The answer has to do with both what I worked with, and who I worked with. I worked on recordings of the best and tightest studio musicians, The Funk Brothers. I worked on recordings of superstars like Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson. I worked with hit producers of hit records, on songs by hall-of-fame songwriters. I learned the quality and skills necessary to get a hit record for a company that demanded this quality as a normal course of action.

As a teacher and and owner of a recording arts school (Recording Institute Of Detroit), I want my students to have the learning advantage that I had when I first started out in this field. Because of this I bring the students world class musicians, songs and productions to work with during their training. We work with this professional quality music and also on student music that students want to record for themselves.

When I teach mixing I sit at the board and do a mix, making sure that students understand what I'm doing as I do it. I set the standard. I then pull down the faders and reset controls to their "zero" points and turn my attention on the students learning to mix. I turn to them and say, "That's what I would do to mix this tune, now take the controls over and do a better mix." That's how I was trained at Hitsville, and that's how I train.

An example of who I bring in for students to work with includes world class percussionist Muruga Booker. Muruga and his Jazz group, The Global Village Ceremonial Band has sell-out releases from an Italian Record Company (Qbico Records), national releases of recordings with the world renowned African Percussionist, Baba Otologina and has gold and platinum awards for releases with Weather Report and dead-heads Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia. Bringing this kind of class to RID training projects is in the RID "bag of tricks" and a good reason that certified RID graduates are among the best in the recording arts field.

Regardless of what school you go to, you should realize that training with the best achieves the best results, and the trick of learning involves working on world class music. Working with the best people should be the approach to becoming world class and, as much as possible, arrange to work with the best people you can during your training phase.