Hey Monkey,
You're sounding a bit despondent here but you really shouldn't be so hard on yourself.
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You're dead on there HP. I
am pretty despondent really because it's not the room, it's not the gear, not the acoustic treatment, not the headphones or monitors or any of that. If you bring in that fella I linked to a few posts above playing his song "Ghost Towns" on youtube...or any other of a million blokes you see on youtube just knocking out nice sounding stuff at will....they could get awesome results
in my room,
with my gear. No question about it. In fact, for a lot of these guys, my room and my gear would be like 7th heaven to them.
I guess I'm somewhat (damn) pissed off and well, let's face it, feeling like I'm never going to get it. I first started getting into recording 20 years ago but due to work, and moving overseas for work about 15 years ago I haven't had the time or the place to record properly and it's been this dream that's built up to finally get a home studio and record the piles of songs I've written. Now I have the home studio and the time...and the results are killing me! I'm just making bad calls, bad decisions. I've always wanted to record great sounding acoustic guitar rhythm for my songs...and I've had so many failures trying to do that, that I literally dread even trying. No joke, the idea of recording acoustic guitar just sends me on a huge downer! But I keep trying and keep failing. My singing...I'm not a singer but I can sing and play acoustic guitar to myself till the cows come home. But when I
record singing it's always this strained, pinched, forced sounding garbage that makes me cringe.
And all of this is ultimately reflected in the end result...what was a simple song to write and a fun song to track...ultimately becomes this unmusical wall of crap that's lost all impact and musicality. So yeah, I'm more than frustrated. You know it's not like "wo is me" and I'm not wallowing in self pity. It just pisses me off that my expectation exceeds the actual result...not by a bit...but by gargantuan oceans. But that might not be fully accurate either...because I know I'm not the greatest musician or any of that...singing and all that doesn't flow or come naturally. Trust me, I know real musos when I see and hear them...and that's not me. So it's not so much my expectations exceed the actuality...it's that my expectations are pretty humble...I work with a limited set of skills and all I want is for the stuff I
can play and sing...to sound ok. And the difference...the gap between those two things is immeasurable at the moment.
So when you say, HP, that my songs are ok...well I thank you very much, sincerely and I think they are ok too. I'm not gonna lie. Which is why it's such a bitter pill to keep pumping out end results that hugely diminish whatever talent or skill I have.
And yeah, I'm rambling and moaning because maybe, just maybe, somehow putting it out there in words will start to light a few beacons of good old fashioned home truth, like looking in a mirror or something and taking a cold kind of look at where I'm at, what I'm doing wrong and how I can make it better. And any of you fellas out there who reply or have anything to offer, well I'm really trying to let what you say sink in.