I just want to echo a few comments... use filters sparingly. You may be cutting the ambiance without knowing it. Believe it or not, some distortions and noise types are pleasing to the ear (mild tape hiss for example). Compression and EQ are (ideally) there to balance the soundscape. Too much compression, or overuse can make a track ugly fast. If you feel that something is being lost on the track, look to phasing problems and other destructive interferences. Lastly, what is your monitoring set up. Are you sure its not the room?

Consider taking your tracks to a professional mixer, or even an advanced hobbyist, and having him mix your song. An engineer will typically charge the same hourly fee to explain what he's doing as he does to mix a record. It might end up costing you a couple hundred bucks, but at the end of the day you'll have a professionally-mixed song that you can then analyze and reverse-engineer. 

The reason I suggest this is because there is no single technique for making a mix "gel" (or "shine" or "pop" or any other perfunctory verb). There just is no big secret. It is the culmination of many small decisions, each the product of experience.

An amateur throwing guesses here, but anyway...

-How do you polish/fine tune the individual tracks? If you do them separately, you might lose something. Adjust the final settings of a track when the whole project is playing. 

- Have you tried saturation FX? I've found them useful. Use it on several tracks to create a natural saturation.

Reading Mike Seniors excellent "Mixing secrets for the home studio", he puts forward the idea of using a specially set up reverb called a "Blend verb" which is used in very small amounts to tie tracks together.

If you haven't got it, I thoroughly recommend it as it addresses the very issues you're struggling with.

+1 all.

Everyone here chiming has helped me see things from a pro-ish perspective.

Decisions like comp, tape, EQ, filtering for sonic spaces, abstracting your fave instruments for Fx work, etc. ... these are numerous and take years of dedicated didactic reasoning, golden ears, etc.

Some giants here, like Bitflipper and Danzi have generously helped me alot with their didactic forum discourses.

Collab-ing with many artists also facilitates decision creativity and integration ... though sometimes personal vibe gets lost.

But most of us seem to think "gel" is an abused term and would rather get more specific with the song elements.

An adventurous professional Mastering ARTIST (Mastering Engineer) may be invaluable, but I'd recommend one that collabs with you and co-produces with you ... one who is an adaptable star-performer himself, with golden ears ... and is willing to immerse himself in your mixes ... not just take your money. 

... Currently, I know of only one star-performer-ME who'd I'd 'currently' trust my heart and soul to ... Danny Danzi III.  (Sorry for my SPAM ... my friends ... I love and trust you all, but we need one another to make the right referrals now and then)

ASG


     Someone PLEASE help me to understand what it is that makes a good mix "cohesive", and what it is that im not doing. I start off with a good gain stage, I HPF everything but my kick and bass from the start so its clear and ive got more headroom, I've learned to EQ any instrument the way i like it, and nothing over laps in my frequency spectrum, ive even tried compressing my mix buss ( which has done nothing for me at this point), but for the life of me i cant get the tracks in my mix to "hold hands." listening to this mix im working on is like looking at a family portrait where all the family members(tracks) are standing a couple feet away from each other instead of shoulder to shoulder lol. Im by no means any proffesional, but ive come too far from where i started to believe that i have bad ears. I know what sound im trying to get, i hear it all day when im in the studio but its like i just cant get my monitors to spit it out and its driving me mad. And for the record i refuse to believe that gelling things together is the mastering engineers job. If I can get any track in the project to sound the way i want it to on it's own, why cant i get them to sound like its all one piece of music when theyre together?

ASG: You soo sound like me before I got some really good monitors and ARC monitor correction software. I began to question my ears as well as my skills. I was ready to hang it up. Without telling you my long, drawn out story, if you can't hear the right stuff, you will never make the right calls. I was at this for years and still struggling. I had a feeling in the back of my mind that my ears were fine...but what was it that stopped me from getting things to sound right?! My monitors and how they were NOT corrected.
 
How can you tell how much bass to add if they are misrepresenting low end? How can you tell how much mid to put in if they already sound like you're getting enough mids? Bass and mids are what causes us to have "gel" issues. If you have too much lows going on in all the wrong areas, you're not going to have a good mix. If you have too much mid range congestion going on, you're going to get mud.
 
You also need to know how to pan and compress correctly. Each instrument needs its place in the stereo field as well as its place in the frequency realm. If you're not panning anything, you're right down the middle and walking on top of yourself. The same with effects you use. Every stereo effect you bring in is equal to hard left/hard right. If you pan all your tracks wide and then add stereo effects, you get an entire mix of hard left/hard right and it will not gel and will not sound right. So there are lots of things to really keep in mind here.
 
As the others have mentioned, it would be a good idea for you to post up a mix so we can hear what you mean. It's hard for us to take a guess without hearing anything. Don't be shy...no one will bite your head off. Well, maybe one guy will because...that's just his nature...but if he does, don't pay him any mind. He can't mix to save his own life. LOL!! But seriously...post something up and let us check out what you have going on.
 
One great thing you have in your corner...ever person that has replied to you in this thread are all really good engineers that have had awesome results. So if they read you posted a song, you'd not get a bad comment out of any of them. All top dudes that know their stuff and have achieved great results themselves. So you're in great hands here, honest. :)
 
Philip: Thank you so much for the most kind words and the plug. Much love to you my brother! :)
 
-Danny

A couple of points that I've seen and I want to put them all into one post.

First;
GIGO - garbage in, garbage out. Sloppy playing, out of time, out of tune...you hear any of that - scrap, start again.

Second;
What you hear is misleading if;
-the room isn't treated
-the monitors don't exist
-you're listening at too loud a volume
-there's no monitor correction software, technique

Third;
-the only rules are, there are no rules.
-compression don't fix everything
-eq don't fix everything
-effects don't fix...well, wait...no, they don't.
-bussing is a technique, not a fix.
-panning don't fix everythign

Fourth;
-the sound spectrum must be complementary to the instruments. While it would seperate the mix a little, it's not smart to put the kick wide-right. So judgement is your best decision. Don't just pan. Know why you're panning. What is the effect you're going for? Visualize the sound to create an image, or a feel, or a sense then work the controls to try to make that happen.

To me, it sounds like what you're struggling with is that you don't know what you want, you just want it to sound better or tight. The only way you're going to be able to isolate what doesn't sound right is through failure and experience. There's no magic. Writing and recording are very different from mixing and mastering.

The writer loves his poems, the recording artists is overjoyed with hearing his work. The mixer thinks it all sucks until it doesn't. The master hates what the mixer did until it's perfect.

These attitudes are polar to each other. I know that is what I struggle with the most. 

One rule - make small changes. Limit the number of them as well. Don't repaint the entire room because of one wrong color spill...

keep at it. the CW community is here to help. That's what I love about these guys.

i dont intend to try to revive this thread after 10 days of not posting but i just wanted to say thanks for all the answers cause its comforting enough just to know that you guys have been where im at beore. I really have been questioning my ears but you guys all made excellent points and are helping me to realize things i have to improve on. So if i want to post a mix to have it critiqued i guess ill post it in the songs forum then.