There are no rules when it comes to mixing music on your computer. You gotta experiment and find out what works well for you. But to find what's really good sometimes you'll find what's bad also. Though when you find something bad at the other end there could be a positive. Through experience you'll find what works for your voice, guitar playing, anything else in your song and create your own unique style and sound.

So once you have all the tracks for your song with all parts recorded with no clips you basically have a fresh canvas on which mix your song.

At first you should turn all your faders to zero. The mix you make depends on the type of music you play and how you what the sound. The most popular music is probably rock so we'll explain how to mix a guitar orientated track with a solid backline.

Drums usually come first in a mix , set the volume to an acceptable level and drums usually get panned straight down the middle of the mix. You would usually add compression to all the drum tracks and I sometimes add reverb, Experiment with the reverb and find what sounds cool. Dont over compress the track, it will drain the flair from the overall sound.

Next can either be bass or rhythem guitars. We'll go with the rhythm guitars now. The best way to get a full sound from guitars is to record doubles of the tracks and pan one left and one right, adjust volumes to ensure you can hear both guitars in the mix. Depending on what you use to record the guitars you may need to use effect, once again, experiment with this and find out what sounds good and what doesnt.

Now for the bass, set the level and pan this down the middle of the mix too. You can compress the bass aswell, but if you like the sound of it uncompressed than its your choice. Add any effects you want, adjust the volume when you add the effects and make sure you can hear your drums and bass clearly. Make sure you rhythm section is really clean and not muddy or noisy. In a good mix you should be able to pic each instrument and hear it clearly.

Now for vocals, always compress your vocals to even out the volume and take away the flat sound by adding reverb and eq slightly.Mix the lead vocals first then the backing vocals around it. A good trick to use is a double backing vocal track and add different effects, pan it left and right so the backing track surrounds the main vocal without touching it. This mite take some work, but when its done properly it will defiantly make for a better mix.

Finally add any guitar solos to the mix and adjust the mix as necessary. Depending on how you have recorded your solo you mite not need effects, but if it doesn't sound how you want it to then go crazy, just make sure it still sounds good.

Now listen to your mix, and pick out any faults you hear, any parts of the song that are too loud, and parts that clip, and parts that need effects. Make sure you hear every track clearly and make sure it any one track doesn't over power too much. Make sure no tracks are sitting on top of the mix, make sure they are all blended together. Finally make sure the master volume is not clipping.