I don't recall any "first time recording" I have heard where things sounded like big time!
If getting great sounds was easy to do, a BBS like this wouldn't exist really.
I have found that the less you try to do while mixing the less power you lose in the mix. Over eq'ing and compression tends to suck up all the sound and you are left with a rather weak mix. It really comes down to recording the stuff pretty close to the way it needs to sound so that there is little eq and compression needed at mix time.
Learning to record things the way they need to sound is a learning process. So many things effect the way you actually record something that you cannot possibly cover every possible thing to try. You will learn your own tricks over time with a lot of practice. The technique of the player, the sound that is produced by the musician, the mic used, the position of that mic, the room sound, the quality of the electronics involved, the quality of the control room monitors, and the sound of the control room itself all play a role in how the recorded sound is recorded. If you have a crappy control room and possibly a flawed monitor system, you will not be hearing exactly what is being recorded and will make poor decisions about what sounds right. If the musician has poor technique (many do...that is why I don't think there are many true "recording artists") such as a drummer who hits with inconsistent velocity, you will have a very hard time getting a good sound to tape because you will never get to optimize the sound. If the quality of the sound source is not all that great (I have found musicians to be generally a poor judge of good tone in the studio....
) you will only be recording a poor sound. If the mic is not the right type for the instrument it won't sound right. If the mic is not in the sweet spot, the sound will be poor. Etc......It all add's up in the end of the production.
Throw in a lack of experience on the engineers part (You!) and you can see that things might not turn out quite as well as you would like them to. Give yourself a little break and don't sweat it. Get this done, assess what worked and what didn't and move on to another recording. Live and learn. It is a life long process. I have done recordings for over 20 years, 12 of them as an engineer and I am still not as happy with the results sometimes as I would like. Sometimes, I just don't have a good song to work with, or good players, or even decent gear, and in the truely horrible cases, I have poor songs AND poor musicians AND poor gear! LOL
Keep your chin up!
Creepy
