Hey guys, as many of you know I started a blog aimed at home recordists (Home Recording Wizard).  Not to be spammy, I am just sharing my recent article hoping it helps some newcomers into the field.
 
Much of the stuff I learned in this article was learned over the years in Cakewalk forums and getting feedback from experienced Cakewalk users on my mixes in the song forums.  I like to pass on my collective knowledge to others while I continue to improve myself.
 
This article has basic ideas and a mixing strategy I find very important to getting a decent mix.  Hopefully it adds to someone's bag of tricks and ideas.
http://www.homerecordingw...levels-finding-pocket/

Nicely written article.  It is the issue with being the musician, engineer and producer.  If you don't mind me borrowing a lame business cliché ... it is a matter of wearing the different hats.  You have to take off you musician hat and put on the engineer hat when you start mixing and mix for the song.
 
 

Thank you Dave.  Spot on with the hat analogy.
 
Back when I used to gig alot, the bass player would always say "turn me up a bit in the monitors" ...which would lead me to say "turn me up a bit now, I can't hear myself"....which led the singer to say...ah you get the point.
 
You have to separate the musician and engineer roles, which is difficult to do (for me).  I would be interested in a simple experiment:  Take 4 novice mixers - Guitarist, Drummer, Bassist and Vocalist, give them the same mix and see how they mix them.  I wonder if you could tell who mixed what, based on the levels.  
 
..I can picture it now:
Listener "why is the bass so #$%#$ loud??! I can't even hear the vocals for cryin out loud!!"  
Bass Player - /smiles and rocks out to the best mix of any song he has ever heard....

LpMike75

Bass Player - /smiles and rocks out to the best mix of any song he has ever heard....

And he's thinking to himself "I can hear every word! I don't know wtf they are talking about!" He reaches for the master fader to turn it up a little bit more and says, " Can you hear it now?"

Guitar player, performer, songwriter, recording engineer, mix engineer, these roles get blurred all the time for me. And I deal fairly good with them.

It's the producer in me I have a beef with! That SOB want's every dang thing perfect. And no matter what I do,it's never good enough. He always thinks it can be better. MF'r! I wanna take him out back and....