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After countless hours of ruining my mixes I have learned a few things. First and foremost - there isn't a cooky cutter method to mixing. Each and every sound and song has a different approach. Here's a few that might help.
My usual approach on any song is to start with my hook sound. If that sound is a cool bass line a la Primus/Rush/Victor Wooten dig, then I start by emphasizing that in such a way that you feel it throughout the song. It may be a cool lead sound on your board and it may even be a combination of vocals and blended with a great sound from your board. Whatever it is, start with your hook sound and try to develop that just enough in the beginning to keep sight of your song and its energy.
The rule less is more is certainly a mainstay in your mix downs. I try and process each track as little as possible until I can hear all of my tracks. There is, what a majority of mix engineers call carving out space, a technique to visualize. In short, volume is used to create the effect of what sounds closer and further away. Turn the volume up for singers and turn the volume down for drummers. This gives the effect that the drummer is on the back of the stage and the singer is up front. Also, your hook sound should have a sonic presence somewhere up in front. Don't make that hook sound bleed out the singer but make it powerful. Now you have to think about placing instruments in various parts of the stage. You do this with your panning. This can be really in depth but, the short answer is - pan lead guitartist on one side and synth/piano on the other side (Pan Left, Pan right). As you put more instruments on the stage, adjust your panning and volume according to where you see them.
Now the fun part. By having a basic understanding of frequencies (or having a cheat sheet that gives you basic freq ranges) of the different instruments, you can start to eq so you won't have, what I call, frequency theft. For instance - The kick drum and the bass guitar are usually panned straight center stage. Even though the bass is a bit louder than the kick, often times their frequency is close enough to cancel one another out. So, you get two tracks that you don't hear completely or you start getting boxy effects or worse, too much bass and a muddy mix. This is where a freq cheat sheet comes in handy and less is more plays a role. By rolling off the sub freqs of the bass (50 Hz?) and slightly increasing the freqs of the kick (150-200Hz? each session and song is different so these are just examples) you start to seperate the two sounds and make them work together instead of against each other. Also, and be really careful here, you can adjust their pan position very, very slightly to help seperate the two.
With me so far?
Now, using compression and reverb and delays are varied. I like to look at each individual track and use reverb or delay according to where the instrument sits on the stage. Anther example - imagine you have placed the pianist on the left of the stage of a medium size club with with walls. Delay can add a sense of realism. Create a stereo buss with delay and on the left side of your stereo channel add a about 5 ms of delay and on the right add about 150 ms of delay (again, how many ms and how much delay you add is to the taste of the mix and the engineer). You have created the illusion of a live player and his sound is hitting the audiences ears much the same as it would live! Bass usually has no delay and singers and drums usually benefit with reverb. Drum reverb is usually short as the resonance of drums is usually pretty short.
The thing to remember about effects is - each instrument has different tonal qualities and you should effect them as such. If you add speed metal distortion to tubular bells, you are certianly not accentuating on that instruments natural sound. This isn't to say that you can get wild and crazy with effects but, you should try for a clean mix first and then work on special effects when your mix is feeling good.
Compression is beautiful but it can ruin your mix faster than Vista can lose all your work for you. The one rule with any effect, and this includes compression is, use only enough to make the track sit right. Use effects when you have to and never max out any effect if you aren't getting results. Problem is, when your mix goes in for final rendering/mastering, those effects will change your tracks (those effects will be boosted far more than you could at first imagine) and destroy that sound you worked so hard to get. Usually, the only way you can repair this is by starting all over with your non effected unprocessed tracks!!
Lastly, take breaks and give your masterpiece a rest from time to time. After a week of mixing, I like to take a three day break from mixing. When I'm ready and think my mix is sitting good, I will take a couple of days and, the day before I go back to listen, I wear earplugs. When I sit down after that break, I will know if I did a good mix or not.
Couple of other tips - if you are having problems hearing you mix, before you start maxxing out eq's and volumes, try turning up your studio monitors first.
Don't record as hot as possible. If you are using a DAW, don't ever go over 0db on the input signal - you will lose some of your sound and dynamics of the instruments. Always allow some headroom as most of your effects will push those volumes up higher.
What I have explained was a very basic way to mix your songs. It's up to you beat your head against the wall, research as much as you can on different ways to mix (like slightly panning the snare and HH from your kick drum, etc.) and putting in the hours of frustration it takes to learn this art. If you start contemplating the idea of chewing on thumbtacks and throwing your mixer out the window, I would say you are on the right track!!
