Pet peeve of *mind*???

I can understand your perception of how difficult and/or expensive it is to get technical assistance with creating your perfect recording, but you are not taking into account the fall in price of the necessary hardware and software.

Setting up a studio is a lot less than you might think - certainly cheap enough for a poor student to get a working rig together. As a gigging bassist in a number of bands, I can assure you that my first recording setup was less total value than my bass, amp and pedals and I have seen many (poor) muso's with substantially more expensive gear than mine.

Our local college runs a contemporary music and recording course - teaching general studio craft as well as Pro-Tools. Nearly all the students buy some form of recording set-up before the end of the course - they may not all become "genius producers", but in my experience there is some real talent there. Some of these guys have more of an interest in recording and production than in being in a band. It's just another form of expression.

This sort of thing is happening all over the country (here in the UK) - look in Sound on Sound mag and you see hundreds of adverts for courses. This months backpiece editorial was all about how there is an absolute glut of new recording engineers and producers desperate for work. You could look on this as the beginning of a new era - just like in the 70's everyone picked up a guitar and thought they could play, many now are entering sound recording as a pastime - out of this vast pool very few will enter large studios, most will end up doing it for themselves.

The main point is, *your* main thing is writing/producing the music, these guys main thing is recording - look around, maybe you'll find a local guy with a few decent mics, a macbook and logic.

The technical guys are out there - they are growing in number and have no industry to work in, so they are all working independently. Stick an advert up in your local music store and see how many responses you get!