I was reluctant to post in here first, hence the half assed joke post. Seems to me there are as many ways to come up with sounds as there are people coming up with them. That's a big part of what makes it interesting to me, the personality that transpires through and colors the work. And if someone was to come up and give you guidelines you'd be likely to "follow the recipe" and lose some of that. Or maybe not... wtf do I know...
For a piece of advice, as a general rule of thumb I'd say stay the f*** away from any sort of machine presets or generic soundbanks that come with software. You can smell those from a thousand miles out and they tend to make things incredibly bland and lifeless, imho. I'd rather hear a slightly off tune piano with some overhead mic and natural room reverb than the best midi controller with VST sampled grand piano & 16 steps of velocity on every note + God knows what.
Then just don't be afraid to make mistakes, try as many things as you can think of and try them in as many ways as you can think of too, don't be afraid to play with variables (record with mics at different distances, try shuffling things in your signal path, bypass an effect when it gets too crowded, bring in new folks in the studio, a kid even! they are so spontaneous!! etc.) Pay attention to the results of your trials, really pay attention. That way you learn pragmatically and no amount of theory is worth anything close to that, knowing why something works and why it doesn't because you actually did the legwork.
Have fun!
(For more specifics, let's PM)
