Re: Mixing techniqes...keep em coming!
If it were 15 years ago I would answer this thread's question with "turn knobs & press buttons until it sounds good" -but since most don't have that luxury any longer (they use a mouse and look at a computer monitor) I'll say "drag & drop, put in plug-ins and tweak sh*t until it sounds good"
Seriously though; Reverb (from a box) is obviously a spatial effect, and these days engineers use it to mimick REAL spaces, and very sparingly too, as opposed to say, Phil Spector productions, where he heeped gobs & gobs of it on EVERYTHING. Why? To create space. Just listen to any records from the 60's and 70's - just swimming in reverb. Don't do that! A cool thing to do since you probably have a gajillion plug-in versions of cool reverbs is, use a totally differnt one on every instrument. Of course they did that too years ago, but were pretty much limited to only two, or if lucky, three - plates & springs. Later we had the majorly bitchen 224 and 224x, and other cool early digital & analogue electronic verbs.
Sometimes I even RECORD reverb returns so I not just save tracks (I don't have "unlimited tracks' like most folks - it's an "old-school studio") can eq and pan reverb on certain tracks for whatever reason - and let the automation do it in the mix. Just use it sparingly. Sometimes subtle delay will do for you what reverb can't. Allan Holdsworth for example NEVER uses reverb on his guitar - always delay, to acheive reverb (and of course, that's what reverb is anyway).
Dynamics are something altogether different. You can use compression/expansion and limiting to very seriously improve a recording. Especially on things that cause sonic fidelity problems, like inconsistent drums, bass & vocals. If you're unfamiliar with the use of compression, experiment on vocals lets say, with a ratio of 2:1 at first, and tweak it gradually while simultaneously tweaking the threshold & output gain. You'll eventually discover that somewhere around 3:1 and 4:1 at -10 and +2 sounds really cool on vocals, but way different for bass. The general idea is, set it so it squishes when peaks are too high and to raise the floor when the level is too low.
Compression is the single greatest thing to happen to recorded audio - ever.
