Thank you everybody. I'll look up the Dummies book. My comment about wanting to sound like me only means that I have a distinctive voice (vibrato, unsmoothed break, lots of over- and undertones). My engineer has captured this very well in the raw tracks, which sound like me and please me, but his mix alters my tone, timbre and use of dynamics, which dismays me greatly.
Now, you engineering types, can I have an unmixed CD? I mean, can I just use the raw tracks -- no EQ, no reverb, no compression, no fooling? Sort of like a live recording? Is this against the law? Does it make your ears cringe to think of it? Please tell me -- I am new to this sound recording stuff and I think I want the plainest, rawest, truest sound I can get.
Thank you for all your patience and consideration and knowledge