Kick is always mono for me, clap/snare is center but with some width, hats I tend to give some decent width and pan them around (Pancake is a good plugin, and keep in mind I'm not just putting them on one side I dynamically move them around), but then toms I generally put higher ones more left and lower ones more right, a little subtly but still noticeable. This way tom fills really move around the stereo field.

However I make edm (as I'd assume most of us do), where if you're mixing more realistic sounding drums you'd want to pan them according to a drum kit setup but that's been talked about in this thread already.

I heard somewhere that snares hitting slightly before the kick contribute to a quicker, more tense feel to the song, while snares/claps hitting slightly after the kick contribute to a more slow and relaxed feel. In my experience it's kind of true and definitely something to play around with.

We're talking like tiny little fractions of a beat though, nothing significant or really immediately noticeable.

Yeha, I find that having absolutely zero attack generally results in clicks but for example in Serum even 1-2ms of attack negates the click entirely.

Massive used to be my go-to synth but lately it's been Serum instead.

I'm not too great with the wavetables (didn't use them too much in Massive either, I loved Massive for the modulation options), but I love Serum's effects, they let me make a semi-finished sound super quickly instead of having to pull up separate reverb/distortion/dimension expansion plugins etc.

Serum's modulation is just as good as Massive's, if not better too.

I'm also using a Moog Little Phatty, I snagged it for super cheap at my local music store.

It really depends what genre you're writing for but I'd suggest starting with pentatonics. If you look at a lot of Kygo's melodies you'll see that they're almost always restricted to just a few notes in a pentatonic scale (normally the key's pentatonic). Say what you want about him but his melodies are simple and still very catchy.

Also check out the rhythm in his melodies. A lot of notes are not aligned to a simple grid but are instead using triplets or swing and stuff like that.

I'm going to elaborate on what Mussar and Mohonad said.

Do not solo your tracks and export them individually! If you've got any effects that rely on other things being played this will ruin them. For example, if you've got a chord that is sidechained to your kick and ducks when the kick plays, you can solo the kick and render it, solo the chord and render that, and then when you throw them back into a new project they won't sidechain. This will also cause problems with any sort of mastering plugins that mess with the overall song's volume. If this is what you want then yes, solo each channel.

However, if it's not, and you do want to create a puzzle that can be easily put back together to form your song exactly as it's meant to be played, then export and select "Split Mixer Tracks". This will separate audio files for each mixer track, but you have to remember that if you have anything that's not feeding into the mixer it will not come out on its own (it will appear in the "master" file which a rendering of the master channel, but not as its own channel).

And finally, bounce to .wav for producers (lossless quality), which is probably who you'd be sending stems. Bounce to .mp3 to share it with friends or test it out on other systems or whatever, but that'll compress it.

I think I'd sooner listen to an artist that has incredible sound design and mediocre mixing/writing/whatever else (for example) than someone who is solid at everything.

Then again, that's just me.

Remember, if you're bad at mixing or writing or sound design or something you can always collaborate to get the aspects that aren't your strong suit.

I'd strongly recommend working on one thing at a time.

Also - you can put a utility on it (if you're in ableton) or any other effect that allows you to filter out all stereo frequencies and have it go from 100% (stereo field the way you intend it to sound) to 0% (mono only)

Damn, that's a great idea! I never thought about that. The actual tape stop effect will be cool and all but pulling everything down to mono at the same time to let it all explode outwards is smart, I'm going to try that when I get home.

Thanks for your response, man!