Any tips on balancing sound and music? For instance, is there anything specific I should be doing when making songs and sounds that would make them sound better when played together?

unfortunately there is no 'ultimate trick' to balance music because it is different between different tracks the only bit of advice i can give you is when using different instruments make sure they dont fight for the same space in the frequency range.

for example guitars with heavy mid notoriously interfere with vocals

Wind instrument in the higher range (piccolo, flute) can interfere with upper violin sections etc

it is really just a case of listening to as much music as you can, critically listening trying to focus in on all the separate instruments and thinking about how close to you they sound.

For example I balance music like i would picture it on stage (not necessarily how it should sound live)

your drums are in the back and centred but each part of the kit is planned to its place on the kit hi hats to the left cymbals left and right snare centre, kick centre, toms slightly left middle and right.

Bass is the exception it's locked to the centre (intricately linked with any bass percussion)

Guitars get placed to the side (left or right)

Vocals in the middle

Orchestral music the same applies pan them to the place the sit in the orchestra there’s plenty of orchestral layouts online.

There is plenty of places that will profess to having the ultimate mixing technique theres are no hard fast rules it's just what sounds right and more importantly practice practice practice

Thanks for the advice. I never thought to try actually panning the instruments into actual orchestral sections, I'll have to try that.

Though, what I really meant by balancing was balancing in-game. In other words, how to strike a balance between the volume of sound effects (explosions, footsteps etc) and the volume of music, and whether or not anything done in the mixing stages can make them sound better together.

First thing you need to do is:

1) Figure out what your max volume should be and how that relates to other games and media. You don't want it to be way louder or softer than the average game experience.

2) From there start making milestones of your loud and soft sound effects. For example what is the loudest explosion sound you have in the game? Pull it within that range and then compare that with your softest sound. For example a butterfly's wing flap. :) I'm kidding! Footsteps or something like that.

3) Figure out where the music can sit where you can hear the softer sounds while the loudest sounds don't completely cover the music. You want the loudest sound effects to have impact but not completely take over the content.

My basic approach is to have the music be lower and in the background (hence the name background music) then make it such that all other related sounds can be heard clearly. Finding that mix is pretty easy, at least to me. The stage that takes more time is getting all of the fall off curves to sound natural and organic.

Another idea would be ducking certain sounds when loud effects happen. Let's say you have this awesome bomb that blows up. While that sound happens do you really need to hear the light wind ambiance and birds in the background? Probably not. Would you hear that in real life? Doubtful. So either duck the less important, softer sounds then bring them back up as the explosion sound dies.

You don't mention what type of engine you're working with but with some time and careful listening, it should come together.

Thanks,

Nathan