In class the other day my lecturer was refereing to planes, he was mentioning how the kick, vox and bass might be on 1, other drums on 2 (maybe) etc etc. I was under the impression it was a convention but seeing you asked maybe it was something he made up to explain it to us in a way that we understood him, I'm not sure?
Oh I get you, that makes sense. I don't know if that's a common convention or not, but it's a good way to explain it. So here's another good question for ya: Do you imagine the sound of the music from the perspective of someone in the audience, or do you imagine it from the perspective of someone on stage in the middle of it all?
I work on a lot of surround projects that are supposed to occur in different spaces, so I would imagine my audio field to be a particular 'shape' based on the project. For example, my mix of a live rock show would have a totally different spatialization than a radio or dvd mix. But more often than not, I imagine most of my mixes to be contained in a sphere.
I do get a bit of space in my tracks but not as much, there is something that is not quite the the same, Tightness and clarity in the space with out sounding over Effected/proccesed?
Hmm...two separate issues there: 1. Clarity 2. Space
Clarity might come from the basics, like making sure all your tracks are relatively tight. Zoom waaaay in on a point in your song where you expect instruments such as bass/drums/gtr/vocals/etc to come in at the same time. Zoom seriously far in, if they're off, start snipping or read up on FlexTime (I'm loving FlexTime, btw).
Space might come from any number of places such as compression, eq, short delays, reverb...Here are some FREE plug-ins that might help you achieve space:
1. Can't say enough about the fine folks at Brainworx. They make an eq with a pretty sick M/S section (that actually works!). There are two free dl's here, one called bx solo and bx cleansweep, check it here:
http://www.brainworx-music.de/en/download
2. And here's one that is simpler but a little heavier, sounds good on dance music:
http://www.quikquak.com/Prod_UpStereo.html
That last one is easy to over-use, I can't count the number of times I've listened to a mix the next day and had to go back in and dial that one down a notch. Anyway there are some ideas, hope that helps.