Hah! I listened to LOTS of music, good and bad. I went to tons of local shows and tried to figure out why the bands that sucked sucked and why the bands that

Hah! I listened to LOTS of music, good and bad. I went to tons of local shows and tried to figure out why the bands that sucked sucked and why the bands that rocked rocked, even when the bands that rocked were playing very simple music. I also did a whole bunch of recording, and spent a lot of time tweaking settings to try to figure out why my guitars sounded crappy and such. Eventually I figured out that the solid bands sound 100X better because they know how to get the right sounds from their instruments... and thus I began learning about amp manufacturers and popular models (can you tell me what the differences are between the distorted tones on a Marshall JCM half stack, a Vox AC30, and a Fender Twin? What about between pinstripe and coated drum heads? Picked and fingered bass? What's a "scooped" sound?) And then there's just giving my mixes to people and listening when they tell me what's wrong.