Industry Standard Mixing Methods

Welcome to the forums.  I think the only way to get better sounding mixes is to learn all the different aspects of production and then practice.
 
What I'd recommend is to google subjects like compression, EQ, mixing, and mastering audio.  There's hundreds of videos on Youtube and articles out there.  I've watched hour-long Youtube videos where audio engineers master a whole project which are very helpful.  Craig Anderton has written tons of articles for Sound on Sound magazine which come up online and can be read for free.  Also check out Cakewalk Blog which has good articles. 
 
Good luck!

There are no shortcuts. Load reference songs in SONAR, analyze their frequency content with something like
Voxengo SPAN, compare to your own tracks etc.
There isn't anything like "industry standard for recording bass/guitar/anything", there really isn't.
The most important thing in creating good mixes is giving every instrument enough room regarding frequencies.
Regarding panning, propably the only consensus is that bass (and preferably anything under about 200 Hz) and kick are always centered.
Say, if you record a piano part played with both hands, the lower part clashes most likely with bass guitar so much,
that you need to practically eliminate it. Guitars and vocals don't need anything under 100-150 Hz, so cut it out. 
Cutting everything under 40 Hz in master bus may clear out useless rumble. Sidechaining may help to get extra separation for pumping kicks etc etc.
 
It's better to compress slightly in several stages (on track level, then on project level) instead of smashing all at a time. Often some volume automation is good before compression.
Gain staging matters, but I've never considered it a biggie in my workflow. When my track output levels are appropriate (not too hot to give room for moving up or down when necessary) so that everything works in master bus, I don't give one thought separately to gain staging.
 
I'm sure there are plenty of guides, videos and tutorials about compressing, EQ and such on the internet. I doubt it's usefull to start copy-pasting them here. If those FXs remain misty to you after watching the videos, it might take a lot of text to explain them here :o)  The site www.tweakheadz.com used to be very useful to me a few years back. There were very well written guides about most anything home recording related. This http://downloads.izotope.com/guides/iZotope-Mixing-Guide-Principles-Tips-Techniques.pdf Izotopes mixing guide isn't bad either.
 
You just need to patiently play with compressors and EQs untill you can hear what they do to what kind of audio material. If you don't hear and see how they work, there's no way we can know what sounds good for the song you're working on. And there's always the question about your monitoring quality. Even with quite usable monitor speakers a really bad room can make mixing almost impossible. Then you need to compare the mix with headphones, speaker, car stereos and any equipment at your disposal. And of course, use reference tracks.
 
Books like Roey Izhakis "Mixing Audio" are really useful. It comes with an audio CD with sound examples.
 
 

I just ran across a good article on Harmony Central called 6 Reasons Why Your Recordings Suck.  Without hearing your songs or seeing your space/techniques, I suspect that you might be plagued by several of these.
 
Kalle's advice above is excellent especially the book recommendation.

Are you getting tone and effects recorded/mic'd, or are you playing in dry and using plugins for tone and effects? I am getting great results in letting the VST stuff get the tone. Of course, I am in the same boat as you, longtime Cakewalk licensee, but just now getting serious. Just a thought from another noob.

Some basic things:
1-Carve out space for the kick and bass.  Example:  If you want the low energy to come from the kick, then high-pass filter the bass around 60 or so and let the kick own that space.  Maybe boost the bass around 1K or so to bring out the notes.  (You'll have to test whether 1K is the right area for you.)
2-Watch out for too much build up around 300-400 hz.  That can make stuff muddy.  I usually cut the kick some there.  Some people say to boost the bass there but that doesn't usually work for me.  You may notice that the ProChannel (in X1, anyway) has a frequency in the EQ defaulted to 317hz.  Might indicate that is a popular trouble area.
3-For acoustic guitars, 600-800 hz can make the guitar sound boxy.  I often cut a tad around 800 and boost just a little way up high (like 10khz).
4-Look on the Internet to see what the frequencies of the lowest notes are for various instruments as a guide to high-pass filtering.  For example, there is almost nothing useful in a guitar below 100 hz.  You can often try using a HPF and keep raising the frequency until you hear some body or depth missing: then back off a little.  I stress HPF because you can eat up a lot of bandwidth in your mix with frequencies that have no musical value.
5-People say cheap reverb is a bad thing, but I am a very light user of reverb and I hate plate which most people like for vocals (and drums).  Lexicon is my go-to.
6-Arrangement can be a bigger problem that the mix. I'm sure you don't do this, but I have heard people cut stuff with piano, organ, guitar, synth, and strings all playing stuff centered around middle C and it just gets really mushed together.  Early Beatles had very little technology on their records (although admittedly they were using great vintage mics placed by world class engineers), but their mixes sound valid today.  Even their Ed Sullivan performances which didn't have much tweaking sound good because the arrangements were very clever.
 
One thing that would help is to let us know what bands or records you think sound good.  Dragon Force, Taylor Swift, and Willie Nelson are going to have very different sounds and mix techniques.  I sometimes A/B with a CD that I don't particularly like but that has the same general instrumentation and that sounds good.
 
By the way, you can listen to a few songs on my current album and, if they sound horrible to you, disregard everything I just said. There are smarter people than me on this forum. themightykonrad.com

Hi. The thing that helped me get (in my eyes / ears), was recording at lower volumes. Not so much the recording it self (sounded ok by itself), but when I started processing them (I wanted everything to sound as good as it could on its own), they overloaded most plugins. That (for me) resulted in a quite thin sound.
As others said, you could upload a song for review. Lots of brilliant people here, that will give you great feedback.
 
Or for basic recording techniques, head over to http://therecordingrevolution.com/
Best of luck.
 
 
 

Deon_C
All good advice here. One of the big eye openers for me in this department is making sure the initial sounds chosen are right for the song and mesh well together with the other instruments in the first place.

No ammount of eq or compression will force a square peg in a round hole. If a sound is good in isolation but not in the mix, then its not the right sound for the song.

This is good advice

Rank hobbyist amateur here, but I have learned some things that have reduced overall suckage considerably in my mixes.
 
- Listen to the tracks a few times after tracking. Note what's too loud or too quiet.
- Get all the levels right, or at least relatively even across the mix.
 
Then apply the tips on panning and centering rhythm, drums and vocals from other posts above.
 
Without eq, compression or anything else, it should sound pretty okay at this point. Pure effin magic.
 
The other thing is to use reference tracks that capture the vibe your after. If you have Izotope Ozone, it can analyze and apply eq settings to your mix based on a reference track's eq. You can learn a great deal from that.

A lot of engineers or producers bring in someone else to mix.  Most of us don't have that luxury.

Lots of good advice here. I'll add something flippant but true in many ways: All that matters is the vocals  
 
Get those right, then have everything else in the mix support them...until an instrumental solo happens, then everything should support that.
 
A few more thoughts:

• The most important mixer button is the mute button. The fewer the number of tracks, the greater their importance.
• Mastering can do amazing things.
• Tracks fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. If one track rules a frequency range, the other tracks can't.
• Compression is overrated, limiting is underrated.
• There are four different curves in the QuadCurve EQ. Choosing the right one can make the difference between a track that sounds great and one that doesn't.
• Too little reverb is better than too much reverb.
• Bass likes a reasonable amount of high frequency boost so it doesn't get obscured by the kick.

 

Everyone, 
 
Thanks for all the great information. Here is a post of the most current project I am working on and this will give you an idea of what level I'm at. It's not letting me post a link to soundcloud. I think I have to post more. 

Craig "Sir George Martin" Anderton is correct as usual, although I would like to add my two cents on the vocals.  A vocal does not have to be technically great to work.  Bob Dylan and Tiny Tim are two of many examples.  I would say though that they got by because they sounded like they *meant* to sing that way.  If people had thought they were trying to sing "well" but were failing, they would never have sold a record. Go to a karaoke bar and listen to an off-key singer trying to pull off a Whitney Houston song.  On the other hand, Willie Nelson's weird nasal voice is loved by millions (although not by me).
 
As a songwriter, I am always going to say that the song is more important than anything else, but what Craig says about the vocal is pretty much what most industry pros say. (In my defense, I don't think Bob Dylan would have made it putting his voice to Besame Mucho.)

Yeah, I have to post more to be able to share links. I will have to continue this when I get the post count up. Thanks again guys. I love that I have this resource.

Ideas for post count increase.
Comment on everything, ask a ton of questions(the answers come fast here), crack a few jokes once in a while to keep it light.
Try not to argue with the experts.. I can get a "tad" stubborn at times with them, but I'm learning.
 
I have also tried to be helpful to newer folks than me. Sometimes I am closer to the language, being one myself.