Once I started mixing, I started wondering what separates good songs from the bad ones. The more songs I mixed, the more I noticed certain patterns or indicators for both categories, recording and songwriting. For me this was so valuable because I am new to song writing and wanted to avoid the mistakes that were not so obvious. Some are technical while others fall into a more creative or subjective nature. Most of this material can be found in various sites on the internet but I thought it would be great to summarize them here to help those that I work with or for anyone who wants to improve.

Any element that does sound very good raw will likely never sound great in your mix. This is one of the most important factors in getting the best sound in your final mix. If you record an electric guitar, for example, and it is too shrill and thin sounding, it may be impossible to make it work well in the mix. Sometimes you may think a sound is great when you solo it, but it may not fit the song, or it may clash severely with other elements. It takes time to get a sound right, but be sure to check these things before you think you are done. Another valuable thing to do when it comes to electric guitars and bass is to record DI (Direct Input) tracks along with what you amped so you can go back and change the sound later if it does not work in the song. This is a very common practice these days and may help you out of trouble at some point.

If you have a string instrument, you might want to ensure you have a new set of strings to help get the best tone as old strings may sound dull and flat. Some people ignore drum tuning, but if your heads are tuned to clash with the notes of the song, you could have problems.

It may take a lot of trial and error in the beginning, but it is well worth the time to see what works and what doesn’t. By altering the mic placement (distance and angle to the instrument or vocalist being recorded), you can get a very specific or distinctive sound.
For vocals you can make the sound bright and airy or dark and distant as an example. The tone of an electric guitar can change dramatically when considering the mic placement and distance from the speaker cabinet.

A DI (Direct Input) recording should never be used because the pickups cannot capture the real sound of the strings and the guitar sound hole properly.

It’s very hard if not impossible to remove reverb from a recorded track. It is always best that these effects are added with all the other tracks in place (typically by your mixer) to ensure that they fit together.

The idea is that you don’t want your listeners to be able to tell the difference. If you are using programmed drums, for example, and every hit in exactly on the grid and each hit is with the same intensity, then it will be obvious it is not real. You can fix these things with careful editing of velocity and timing, but if you are not proficient, find someone to help you do it well.

Nothing is more disheartening to learn that you have actually deleted the wrong take or that you wasted time editing something that was just mislabeled. Do it well from the start and it will help you make a good habit out of the process.

This is especially helpful if people are recording their parts from different locations. Some people find this unpleasant to do because if your timing is off, it will be distracting. It does take some practice, but the end result will be so much better. Also it is very hard to edit music that has major timing issues.

This is probably the most critical for drums and vocals. For drums, if you record in a room with no treatment, you may have reflections all over the place, making it very difficult to get a clean drum sound no matter how much EQing you do later. If the sound is too dead, then you may lose the good frequencies that give you a nice room tone and a bit of that live feel we like to hear. The same holds true for vocals--trying to edit/change the sound just doesn’t work well. Recording vocals in a closet (very dead small space) may suck the life out of a great sounding performance.

Most vocal performances for example are composed of many takes comp’ed together to get one seemingly great take. It is good to record a few takes to pull from, but don’t wear out your singer by asking to do the song 15 times. Just redo short takes of the areas that are the most concern. You may want harmonies in certain places, so even if you are not sure if you will use them, they are great to have in the event you want them.
Sometimes the original arrangement needs to be changed because it is too sparse. If it is lacking a rhythm track on one side, then having some extra (different) sounding guitar tracks could save the day.