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If you want a mixer for live recording, there are plenty of excellent choices.

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20. Get yourself a pop-shield. It will stop people spitting all over your mic, and also prevent those popping plosive sounds, such as you’d get from saying ‘popping plosives’ into a microphone without a pop-shield.

21. Always pay close attention to microphone placement. With drums and other instruments this might mean getting down on your hands and knees next to the kit or amplifier with your headphones on; with vocals it might mean strapping your vocalist to a pillar and placing the mic 20-60cm away. Vocals still too boomy? Then simply move the mic even further away.

22. Whenever you’re recording delicate sounding instruments, be sure you’re using a very clean and high-quality signal path, as such things are far more prone to hiss when EQ’d and compressed.

23. If you’re recording anything in one long take, it makes sense to do a basic pass first, then to go back and add flourishes such as long solos or that mid-set scratch attack. Otherwise, you risk spoiling a good take with a simple mistake in a tricky section.

24. You might well encounter a lot of hiss when recording a guitar amplifier, so either use some high frequency roll-off or a noise gate to counter it.

25. It can be very easy to get carried away in the middle of a live set, so make sure you keep an eye on your inputs. Intentional distortion on guitars is great, but overloaded signals on a vocal or drum mic will just ruin the fidelity of your recording.

26. Even if you don’t play any instruments, we’re willing to bet that you know people who do. The best way to learn is by trying, and most musicians will be happy for you to learn about engineering while you record them for free.