a huge thing is just choosing the right sounds in the first place. whatever they are, you want them to be quality sounds and you want them to be able to work together well, even before you really start mixing. just doing that will save you from trying eq/compressing/etc. the fukk out of things to make them "fit". if you can do a decent sounding rough mix (just panning/levels), you're already on the right track.
another thing is just learn your tools. you can have the illest waves plugins, ssl strips, 1176's and whatever but if you don't know how to use them, who cares. eq, compression, reverb, delay, saturation, whatever...read up on them. fukk around with them, figure out what the knobs do. see how they affect different instruments. threre's a lot of bullshyt on youtube and forums and such... but check out dave pensado, ken lewis, soundonsound, gearslutz.com...,there's more that i'm not remembering right but the ones i mentioned are legit and have great tips.
as far as eq'ing goes, i'm more of a "cut first, boost second" type of guy so what i like to do is go with a pretty narrow q, rise that shyt up like 10dbs and find frequencies i don't like or need, and if i do, i'll widen it to see if need any more, then i'll cut that shyt out. oh and for eq'ing stuff, i'd say hi-pass or cut out the low end on pretty much anything that doesn't need to be in that "kick/bass" frequency area...cuz often there's residual noise in that area on other instruments, even hi-hats and cymbals and shyt can have information you don't need muddying up your low end. on most other effects, i do the opposite of how i eq - i'll basically start that effect at zero and gradually raise it up and up until i'm really feeling it, then i'll push it a little more just to check...and if it's not working, i'll pull it back to where i liked it.
when i think of other shyt i'll come back to this.
