I guess part of my problem is I have very strong music opinions on what I like and don’t like. It’s easy for me to listen to something and break down (albeit mostly in laymans terms) what exactly I like about the combination song/genre/era. But for some reason when I sit in front a DAW I’m complete lost at how to compose sounds into something I like. And there’s all sorts of strange knobs controlling something(decay, gain, idk it differs between instruments) and I have no clue how to use it all without brute forcing.

I have a similar issues with front end web design. I can have everything pictured in my head and even and idea of how to achieve it but somehow it never ends up looking like what my brain envisioned.