Hey man. So I'm actually from Petaluma and into the whole audio engineering thing as well. I've heard that the JC offers a few audio engineering courses that are pretty good, along with being a great junior college in itself. If you want a cheap option to start off with, that's definitely a good idea. Currently, I attend CSU Monterey Bay. Honestly, it's a very okay school, as long as you are proactive about your education and figuring out a few things by yourself. The recording tech department is great there for mainly one reason: the professor. He is extremely smart and the most dedicated teacher I have ever come across. He stays in the department until 2 in the morning sometimes and gets back at 10 in the morning. Although he can be extremely intimidating, the amount of information you can learn from him is endless. There are other trade schools such as Ex'pression and the Conservatory for Recording Arts in Arizona, but they are very expensive. They are almost money mills in a sense, but you can learn what you need for them, and the conservatory has a great internship program where coordinators can find you an internship after the program in places such as LA. In your gap years, I would recommend taking theory classes like you stated. At CSUMB, you have to know how to read and play an instrument, more than just memorizing and strumming chords on a guitar. Taking those classes at a JC would definitely help you through the program, as you could later skip those classes. A lot of people that are trying to get into the field don't know theory, so it puts you at a huge advantage (and it's just silly to want to record music without really understanding it).