It's a balancing act, because you want to make sure your vocals are audible throughout the whole track, without overcompressing. Regarding the vocals, maybe go easier on compression? Higher ratios can make an element sound a lot smaller, and heavy gain reduction on a lot of compressors exaggerates the upper end and makes the sound brighter. Sidechaining kick to bass is pretty common, but I wouldn't suggest doing it automatically - being smart about EQ has served me better in this regard. So it's really a case-by-case thing - if you find a particular element lacking, some subtle sidechaining can give it that extra boost that adds just enough presence. In my specific case, I used a pretty lifeless mic on the kick, but my snare always sounded great.

On a rock album that I recently finished, I sidechained the kick to my snare on a lot of songs and that helped a lot with making the kick more audible. I find this is a good way of finding good attack/release settings for compression in general, especially when it's hard to hear exactly what's going on. The ideal result makes the sidechained element easier to hear, but it doesn't 'sound' like sidechaining. I typically start with a really low threshold so it's very obvious and you can hear a clear pumping sound, then dial it way back. That said, of course there could be situations in which a sidechain could work, but I've personally never used on for rock, and have resolved the problems you are describing using the techniques mentioned above.Д«e subtle with sidechaining for rock music.

You generally want to be panning guitars hard (although there are no strict rules), if there is only one guitar part it is worth recording it twice and panning one take left and one right, this leaves a lot of space in the centre for the vocals. If you listen to a lot of old rock records they pan things all over the place. Panning is another one you can use quite liberally in rock compared to EDM. Impulse response reverbs can also be pretty great for getting a natural sounding reverb that doesn't bury everything, but I haven't used them much. I frequently end up using a mixture of delay and reverb to get the best of both worlds. It's often worth trying echo/delay type effects instead of reverb, as these effects generally maintain a clearer mix. They generally require a lot of playing around with EQ and levels of both the vocals and anything in a competing frequency range to get them sounding right, as well as appropriate use of effects. Vocals are generally a tricky one though, I'll give you that. although rock guitars don't always need much/any compression due to the existing distortion. For example you can often have a group track with all the drums and compress that, and another group with the guitars, etc. However if you are just doing this for yourself, multiband compressors are generally better for master compression, as you can control the compression of each frequency band individually.ДЄlso try compressing individual tracks or groups of tracks more, you can make your mix louder and punchier by compressing certain elements of the mix more than others. You will struggle to get as loud and punchy a result as someone who's job is doing just that. These kind of things are best done by a mastering engineer. Have you ever considered that you might just be applying too much compression to the main bus? This is a common amateur mistake, throwing a compressor on everything in an attempt to make it louder. For cymbals sometimes you just need to reduce some of the harsher frequencies, as these really get emphasised during bus compression, and you can bring their level down a bit generally, you might just have them too loud, and compressing the master is exacerbating the problem. Much like in any genre, you have to try to figure out which frequencies have multiple instruments competing in them and decide which instrument you want to 'own' that particular frequency range, and reduce the levels of that frequency on other instruments (although if you overdo this it can end up sounding weak).

It sounds to me like you have more of an EQ and levels issue, I don't think sidechaining is an appropriate response. I would be wary of using sidechaining for rock unless you are going for a heavily produced vibe.

How to sidechain in pro tools