Marlon Hawkridge cut his teeth pulling cable in a Portland live room in 2003, worked his way up through assistant gigs at three regional studios, and ran his own room — Hawkridge Sound — from 2014 to 2024. He's tracked roughly 400 records across genres, with a stubborn preference for ribbon mics on horns and his battered Studer A80 for stereo bus duty.

He writes from the position that almost everything good about modern recording can be traced back to a decision someone made with their hands in 1972, and that knowing why those decisions worked makes you a better engineer regardless of whether you ever touch a real piece of tape.