When one piece of music seems outstanding next to the mediocrity of another it is commonly not because of the melodies involved. Instead, one track sounds better than another because it has a balanced and sweetened mix while the other has been patched together with in an amateur and guesswork fashion. The list below gives some tips to consider when mixing a piece of music that has professional aspirations.
1. Use the most professional sounding recordings and samples to build your track in the first place. Bad audio recordings is the surest way to have a terrible sounding track.
2. Use EQ to cull out spaces for each instrument. For example, cut the bass drum at 80Hz so that it doesn't interfere with the bass guitar and cut cymbals around 1KHz to keep their noise from interfering with lower instruments.
3. Create a nice stereo field by panning some instruments. While the bass drum and guitar should stay in the center to give the track stability, other elements such as cymbals and strings can be panned to add depth and sonic intrigue.
4. Understand and use compression to give clout to presence to each instrument. Tracks sound weak and lame without compression and is often a main difference between professional and amateur sounding tracks.
5. Find favorite CDs in the same genre as your track and compare it to yours. If your track doesn't sound as good, or has too much bass for example, then figure out why and fix the issue.
6. During mastering, or the final mix, use a limiter to crunch down the highest peaks of the recording, allowing you to bring up the level of the entire mix without distorting.
After you've mixed down to CD, play your fresh new track in a variety of speaker systems to make sure it holds up in all listening environments.