I remember the good old days when I looked forward with anticipation to replicating so many of those great tones of instruments that I'd been listening to for so long.......but my acoustic guitar didn't "acoos", my clavinet didn't sound like Stevie Wonder, my bass didn't even sound like me and I'd been playing for 11 years at the time ! My mandolin sounded like a womandolin, my electric piano would've gotten me thrown out of any self-respecting jazz club and as for my electric guitar.....
"Oh ! My nose !
Ooww ! My face !!!
Aaaaarrrrggghhh !!!!!"
It sounded like a rubber band or worse still, an electric rubber band. And the only reason my piano sounded like a piano was because it's impossible for an upright piano to not sound like one, no matter how badly it's played. My vocals were, as some sweet lady once put it, "demonic" and the drums were a one-track nightmare of unbalance and either not enough snare or too ritzy high-pitched snare-y snare and cymbals distorting and covering everything.
Not absolutely everything was so bad that even a deaf person would reject it, but after 5 albums I concluded that I could do better.
So for the next 14 years, I persevered. Recorded about 100 songs, or thereabouts. Some of my favourite songs in all the world. Worked really hard, particularly on vocals, enlisted the help of many friends to sing and play. But working with an 8-track cassette portastudio with no direction from anyone and being self-taught, much of what I produced was a mess. Sure, it was better than those first 5 albums but still too much distortion, high levels etc.
But the last 14 years have seen me be a little more patient in many things, upgrading to a digital 12-track and thinking about things like where to put mics, levels, good sounds, different sounds on the same instruments, better drums, even if I have to play them myself and layer each sound bit by bit. And this is where my music has come on in leaps if not bounds ~ I no longer try to emulate sounds.
I couldn't be less interested in someone else's instrument sound. Rather, what I go for are approximations. And I'm interested in a sound that I like. I'm not going to spend half a day "dialling in" a guitar sound. Rather, I'll play about for a bit and as soon as I hear a sound I like, I'm on it. I might tweak a bit to see if it will become even more likeable, but that won't be for long. I'm like that guy that will go out with any girl rather than drool over one particular girl at the bus stop for months on end. And what I've found is that I don't have any particular instrument sound on any instrument. My bass guitars are varied. My electric guitars are varied. My keyboard sounds are varied. When I use brass or string VSTis, I never ever keep a template. I always start from scratch and I always record individual instruments and then build them up together. Yes, sometimes it's hit or miss, but the misses are few and far between.
Like you, I'm an impatient working person that doesn't have the luxury of days and nights and years on end to become an engineer and Tom Dowd didn't want to live next door to me with the noise my kids made ! I pick up what I can here and there but I like the concept of the guerilla recorder, working beneath the surface. My raw tracks are anywhere between OK and acceptable but I've learned how to string together a load of tracks into something I don't puke at when I listen to. In fact, though I can see the shortcomings in my stuff, I like them. I don't focus on what's not good about them, I enjoy the song.
The main rule of mixing is "don't suck." I know that sounds trite, but things have to sound pretty atrocious for me to get miserable nowadays. Once in a while, I might have to remix something. Or sometimes, a song might take me 3 attempts before I'm happy with it. But all that matters is that end result. If you have to "cheat", then "cheat." Les Paul was "cheating" in the 1940s.
Try to see if you can just come up with tones that you like, rather than going after tones that you want to copy. You never know.....
