Staff Sgt. Joe Skinner, an audio engineer with the U.S. Military Academy Band at West Point, recently spent some time talking with students in Donna Schlegel’s general music classes at the C. J. Hooker Middle School in Goshen. Skinner, a classically trained musician and composer, explained the roles of an audio engineer, which include recording, reinforcing, creating, editing and mastering. He also discussed different career paths, including live sound, DJ, broadcasting, recording, and creating sound for film, Internet and video games. Skinner talked about the history of audio recording, going back to 1877 when Thomas Edison invented the cylindrical tin foil phonograph. He explained the evolution of audio recording, from vinyl records, magnetic tapes and 8-track tapes to cassette tapes, CDs and MP3 players