First, the faders

Here’s a simple lesson that it took me literally decades to learn:

When you’re starting to work on a mix, don’t automatically start inserting plugins and adding effects.

Instead: first work with the volume faders. Just the volume faders!

Play the song back a bunch of times from beginning to end, and, only moving the volume faders, get the mix as good as you can.

When you have it at a place where you really like it, do a “Save As.” Then reset all the volume faders to 0 and do it again.

The second time through will be much faster and much better, because you were subconsciously learning in those first 20 minutes with the material what the relationships are between the elements in the song, and how they want to work together.

When you have the best possible balances that you can get using just the volume faders, then the things that need to be addressed will naturally call attention to themselves — dynamics that need to be better controlled, EQs that needs to be fine-tuned, etc.

Faders up! — jamie