http://www.klf.de/online/books/bytheklf/manual.htmIt's Anglo-Centric, but a good read nonetheless...
An excerpt:
"On entering a recording studio for the first time you will naturally
be impressed with all the gear. Do not be intimidated - it is all
there ready to work for you. There will be thousands of dials, knobs
and faders at the engineer's finger tips and he will know what every
one of them does. This might over awe you but just remember he was
most probably reading in Studio Weekly, only moments before you walked
in, about some new piece of studio hardware that's just come on the
market and that every studio should now have, if if they are to stay
in the race. That studio engineer is going to be worried that you will
notice that they haven't already got it in this backwater of audio
technology."
"...Have the programmer explain what his computer/keyboard/sample linked together can achieve, revel in the MIDI revolution of it all and then ask the engineer to either turn up or turn down the air conditioning."
"Engineers are a rare breed. They all assume they are the greatest
engincers in the world - or at least the greatest undiscovered
engineers in the world - or at the very least, given the right gear to
work with and a project like the next Sting or Peter Gabriel album,
would soon become the greatest.
The plus side of this is he will work his guts out to prove this is
the case. The down side is that since Sting started making records of
the sound quality the engineer aspires to, he has stopped having U.K.
Number One singles. Those early eighties Police records had a lot more
in there that the Great British singles buying public wanted than on
any of his mature stuff, whatever the calibre of the guest jazz
musicians.
In five days you are not going to make something that is going to be
able to compete with the latest album engineered by Bob Clearmountain
or produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Once the engineer is on your
wavelength and sees that you are dedicated to your cause, he will go
with you.
In their own world, studio engineers can become superstars demanding
points (a percentage of the gross takings) on the mega selling
platinum albums they work on. They can become very rich men. The
great thing about them is they very rarely become openly arrogant; if
one were to he would never get on. The years of making endless cups of
tea for the client has knocked it out of him. Also the successful
engineer knows he doesn't have to be arrogant. His craftmanship on the
records he has worked on does all the talking. Whereas the successful
artist suffers from a continual paranoia that his bluff might be
called and will be seen to be a fake. He needs his arrogance to hide
behind. He will also convince himself that his public expects a
certain amount of arrogance from him. The trouble is, the suckers do."