Automation is your friend; buy a four-track

Dont be afraid to really grab on to yours faders and parameters during the recording and mixing stage. Mixing is much about levels and panning in relation to the band/ artists intentions. Anyhow, sometimes a simple tweak with just one knob may improve your recording, for example:

Attack on compression When recording the lead vocal use two microphones, one close and one further away in the same room. Connect a comressor on the close microphone and take some dB's off. Since the dynamic range on vocals usually are to wide a little compression can do much, but try to leave the ambience mic whitout compression. When the singer hits the loud notes, the close mics compression starts to work and at the same time the ambience mic goes up instead of being pushed down in volume. So if you want to bring up the ambience sound whitout to push the fader up when the singer hits the loud parts, just bring down the attack on the compressor during parts you want to have a more roomie sound. Try it on drums to.

Threshold on gate If the advantage is there to record the drums in a bigger room, spare atleast one microphone for ambience. Seeing that the snare drum commonly is the loudest, gate the ambience microphone so only the reverbation comes up in volume when the drummer plays. Then sometimes, during a more heavy or solo part in the song, bring up the threshold almost as the gate would stop working or be bypassed. The result can be a very creative way to get variations in the song, but can also be unfavorable so be careful.

Fader Riding When changing the volume on tracks in DAW programs, set the track i write mode and change it in real time by yourself along the song plays. Try not to play Microsoft Paint in your Pro Tools, press play and grab the fader! Best way to be familiar to actual fysical contact with faders is to buy 4 track and the bounce/mix down in realtime to a 2 track casette deck which every family have.
When recording with a 4 track your mind really start to work properly. Since there is no automation, editing or so called practical tools that can help, you start to prevent "after editing" already in the recording stage. Fuck the editing tools, spend the engery on yourself, you are the best plugin tool.

Automation in Pro Tools.

Tascam 244, a good way to practice mixing and learn to prevent "fix in the mix" as there is no editing tools.