I love that recording music has become easy enough that even beginners can express themselves. Furthermore, I applaud the fearlessness of newbies who grapple with technology, try to make sense out of today’s complex tools, and persevere to record and mix their music.

Yet, it’s still not that easy to obtain a “professional” sound when you’re starting out. Having taught classes, presented workshops, and worked with beginners, I’ve heard some truly original and refreshing music — however, there are often easy-to-avoid mistakes that drag down those bedroom productions. Like uninvited guests at a dinner party, here are 10 common mistakes that keep surfacing and are easy to correct.

Via Dave Winer, I am going to start following Patrick Skinner, it sounds like he understands both the problems and how to solve them…

Patrick Skinner spent a decade running counterterrorism operations overseas for the CIA. He worked in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Jordan; met with kings and presidents; rose through the ranks. But he came to believe he was part of the problem, that the very premise of the work was flawed. So he came home, and joined the police force in Savannah, Georgia, where he grew up.

I first learned about Skinner in a New Yorker profile. Then a friend mentioned his Twitter feed to me: There, Skinner reflects, in a thoughtful, continual stream, on the work of policing, the importance of treating your neighbors like neighbors, the daily work of deescalation, and the behavior of his menagerie of pets.