A lot of us might not be as much of "performers" as we are "sound guys". I know for myself, I prefer to do a million takes on lead trombone and splice them together to create a perfect track, then the same on 2, 3, and bass, and on to the next instrument. I also know I CAN'T play a single perfect take, so I'm more open to doing smaller bits rather than trying to run songs down entirely at once.
 
Back when I first started doing this - most of the guys here were around then, maybe 6 or so years ago - I did EVERYTHING so that I could sound *just* good enough to sound okay for what I was doing at the time. That goes particularly for piano and guitar in my case - I learned JUST what I needed to be able to accomplish what I wanted to back then.
 
Now my thoughts are a bit split - how much better could I have been had I instead sat down and properly put in the time to learn ALL the chords and inversions I needed on piano? To learn ALL the bar chords and some funk stylings on guitar? To spend REAL time learning how to read in Bb so that when a part is in front of me I'm not half-struggling to get the key in my fingers on trumpet? How much MORE useful would I be for myself and my fellow musicians then?
 
On the flip side, I find that after all, it's helped me build a good general music foundation, and understand some quirks of individual instruments that I wouldn't have otherwise spent much time investigating. It's also helped me keep a burning interest in music because as soon as one instrument got tiring (or I maxed myself out), I could move onto another - one on which I maybe possessed a completely different set of skills/styles/chords. That doesn't stop that I feel like I limited myself severely, but I also kept myself interested in what I wanted/needed. Sometimes I DO feel inadequate, a LOT of times I KNOW my "real" playing isn't up-to-snuff, and when i DO hear people who are highly skilled I often think about how good I "could have been" (I probably still could, tbh).
 
What are you guys' thoughts on getting "good enough for the studio"? Do you feel like a studio recordist ought to have one or two instruments that they've really got under their thumb? Or would you rather have 5+ instruments that you're mediocre or decent at, but can make sound good enough for the studio with enough chopping and splicing?
 
 
Mostly just musing... looking for opinions and interesting thoughts and experiences. :)

FOR ME, it's always about the performance.
 
i know i could sit for hours and put something together that is just shy of perfect.
 
but i live with the warts and all..
 
i typically go for the entire performance from beginning to end.
 
i might go thru a half dozen or more takes to get it,
but i always like the way the  tracks sounds, when i go out on a limb.
whether it's bass, vocals, guitars, i try to get something solid from beginning to end.
 
that's usually what you hear when you listen to one of my recordings.....
 

Similar to Batsbrew; guitar is the only instrument I really play, so I feel duty bound to try and record a 'performance' with as little comping as possible. Depends whether I'm using a variety of guitar parts throughout the tune though.
 
As far as other instruments go, I can put together some keyboards if I keep it simple and don't draw attention to it 
 
Bass and drums - collaboration whenever possible, I leave those to the guys that know what they're doing.

There are people in this world who can walk in and nail a take with little or no preparation. I am not one of them. Nor do I know any of them personally. My reality is that getting a "perfect" (meaning: good enough) take isn't always easy, and I shamelessly lean on every trick in the digital book to bump the quality up a notch and smooth over the imperfections.
 
But here's the limiting factor. If a performance could be rated on a scale of 1 to 10, all your best editing and processing tricks can only bring it up by 2 or 3 points. And that's if you're pretty good at things like comping and compression and pitch correction and editing. That means a "3" performance isn't going to get higher than a "6". 
 
Consequently, the closer you can get to "perfect" BEFORE engaging any remedial fixes, the better the end result will be. Always.
 
That comes down to time-consuming rehearsals. You play or sing the part over and over until you can perform it without thinking about it. Not only will you require less post-tracking manipulation, something magical happens once you reach that point: the performance becomes nuanced. You stop reading the lyrics as you sing and start thinking about what they mean, about your timing, breathing, emphasis and enunciation. You no longer have to consciously tell your fingers where to go because they've been there before. You can divert your brain from macro to micro, to the subtle inflections that raise a performance from the mundane.
 
I would also emphasize that complete perfection is rarely the true goal. Quite the contrary, imperfections are absolutely necessary. That's why I never quantize anything, never let Melodyne decide what vocal corrections are needed, never worry about breath and fret noises, and almost never comp parts. When I first discovered the miracle of pitch correction, I went overboard with it and horribly mangled a few vocal tracks before figuring out that pitch variation, not perfection, is absolutely essential to pleasing vocals.
 

bitflipper
There are people in this world who can walk in and nail a take with little or no preparation. I am not one of them. Nor do I know any of them personally. 

you know one now.
 

What you're talking about is precisely why I'm taking the break I am right now.  I'm re-learning guitar and drums.  I have committed to finally learning a little theory and practicing scales, working with modes trying to become a better performer and better studio worm.  
 
Otherwise I'd be putting a new song out every couple of weeks.  But, like you, I'm tired of playing stuff in bits and bites.  Rhythms are no problem, I always get those in one take as it is.  But leads are where I used to spend my time dicing up phrases and recording them steps at a time.  
 
But we also need to realize and accept our limitations.  For instance, I have a poor memory, so bad that I can play a song a hundred times and all of the sudden just forget where the next chord is, or something.  It's weird.  I don't know why it happens, but it does.  I just call it a brain fart.  So, I'll never be a performer on stage really, but I can be a good performer in the studio. 
 
I would advise accepting certain limitations of yourself, while refusing to accept others.  Priorities, I guess.  

Interesting thoughts thus far. Bitflipper seems to have nailed it pretty good.
 
I do also have a strong tendency of late to not actually WRITE songs - often times I'm gumming around in the studio trying to create a full song but without any lyrics, a barely-functional melody, trying to use very few instruments and create a rudimentary mix.
 
Other times though, in a more big-picture kinda way, I HAVE a full song and just struggle to create it the way I HEAR it in my head - even HAVING good performances (or well-edited to the point of sound great). Where the mixes just don't quite fit together as they ought to. That's a whole separate issue, though.
 
We do all have limitations... Admittedly, "poor" performance isn't really one of mine, it is definitely an issue when trying to play mad technical passages where my fingers just aren't practiced to move. My big block though is that I love to experiment but I very rarely, if ever, come up with song ideas that I find worthwhile to expand.
 
Takes practice I guess... and probably learning to let go of hoping on creating a masterpiece right out the box, and just create THINGS - eventually, with enough time invested and skills acquired, the masterpiece WILL crop up

I use a different approach between writing and recording the final version.
 
For writing, I want to get ideas down quickly so I can develop the various parts without having to worry about learning how to play it perfectly.
 
At this stage, I quantise all my MIDI parts, and since Melodyne I can do the same with my guitar parts. Lead vocals and guitar solos I'll pretty much leave as is though. 
 
Once I'm happy with the song, I'll practice like hell and re-record without any correction.
 
M.

Translating what I hear in my head is another talent I lack. I manage it maybe 10% of the time.
 
The good news is that much of the other 90% turns out better than what I'd imagined. Some of it's serendipity, but mostly it's because you simply can't hear a full mix in your head or imagine how the parts will fit together. Most last-minute improvements are epiphanies that could only happen in context.
 
That said, historically I've always done better with compositions that were mostly complete before I started recording anything. It's related to my previous point about rehearsing a part to near-perfection before attempting to record it. To quote (or at least paraphrase) Dwight D. Eisenhower: plans are useless, but planning is essential.

I'm definitely in "The End Justifies the Means" camp when it comes to doing things.
 
The only person who will know/care that you spent all day trying to nail your part in one go is you. The person who is listening to your mix at the end only cares about how that performance makes them feel, not how you did it. So if it takes 20 edits, or a bit of Melodyne to fix a bum note or timing or whatever, do it. The goal is to get the vision down for me, rather than the mechanics of it all.
 
HOWEVER...
 
There's a lot to be said for a blistering, seat-of-your-pants performance where things aren't polished to the Nth degree, and all of the fire and excitement taken out of it. So what if there's a bit of string noise going into a bend? So what if your snare is a little early in this part of the song? Is that slightly sharp vocal attack giving more immediacy to the take? Those little "wrong" parts are exciting. I definitely like to take a hybrid approach to it all - comp/tune/edit as much as needed but listen for the character, and try to get as much done in one go so you have that feel of continuity of a single take.
 
The flip side to that is that if you're only able to do this in the studio with editing (and there's nothing wrong with that, like I mentioned - art is art and if you want your art to sound a certain way, who cares how you get there), taking this out live is something else. There's nothing worse than hearing something on an album that's incredible and then seeing it live and realising that it was all editing magic. Edit away, sure, but then go the hell away and practice!