mixing and balancing

Hello
I'm sure this has happened to you.
You've got three tracks ie bass/vocal/piano.
You balance them and the bass sounds too loud.
So you lower it and, oh dear oh dear, the other two get louder!
So you lower them a bit and , oh dear oh dear, the bass is too loud again.
Before you know it, you've pulled everything to the bottom of the scales
and you start all over again. I seem to have had this problem all of my recording life.
Are there any definitive answers to this problem?
Sorry if you've heard this all before!
Echo

I just make everything louder than everything else.
 
By at least 20-40%.
 
Through my Soubdblaster audio card of course.
 
Then it all goes crash in the loudspeakah.
 
That's my SONAH.
 

Lol. Hell yeah! I've been there a few times, and I almost posted the same thing you did a few months back.
 
However, I learned one trick that saves me from going there anymore. It's the "matching the kick with the bass using VU meters" trick. However, you're not using a kick on that song, so it might not be relevant. But it sure helped me out. Once I get the kick and bass volume right, and those two tracks together are peaking at -12dB or so on the Master fader, those two sliders never get touched again. Then I just build my mix from there (volume-wise) based on those tracks.
 
Here's a video on the "trick":
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Using-VU-meters-for-low-end-levels-m3475996.aspx
 
Sorry for the LOL, bro. But I know exactly what you're going through. I laughed at myself many times when this happened. You just gotta bite the bullet and start over when your faders are all the way down at the bottom and you can't even see any meters. Proper gain staging was probably one of the most important things I've ever learned.
 
Good luck.
 
~Jeff

I don't know what kind of monitoring you have but once I get down to the real mixing stage (and I'm not saying I pump out major label mixes all the time) I'm moving the faders just a few decibels or even half a decibel. With bad monitoring it's easy to overdo it in order to really hear an effect.

If the bass is too loud on some notes it could be a sign you need to treat your room, or if your room is good you may want to compress the part a little more.

If it's too loud only in specific parts of the song use automation.

Thanks to everyone who posted.
You've given me stuff to try.
Tomorrow I will start again!!!!!
Echo

And not to forget about it -
panning could also  be a reason for umbalanced mixes -
think the experienced user  know how to .
Have you thought about ?

I'm with Chuckebaby with EQ suggestion. Pianos lower part interferes usually heavily
with bass, and if the kick adds to that, it's practically impossible to solve it using level faders.
The arrangement plays a big role of course - what is played on the left side of the piano keys.
I've sometimes used EQ and volume automation so, that when the bass plays something I like to be heard,
I EQ the low piano practically out, and vice versa. Or EQ one of them with a narrowish band pass.
 
 

Sanderxpander
... Band reject?

A Band Reject filter may be too much.
 
I'd be happy just to use the Parametric in the Quad Curve with a fairly wide (low value) Q
 
Another useful trick is to use Voxengo's Span (free) which can be easily set up to show the curves of 2 different audio tracks simultaneously making it easy to spot overlapping frequencies. You'll know then what and where to cut (or more rarely, boost)