What techniques do you not really use that everyone else seems to?
Here are a few of mine:
Compression: rarely use it as effect, rarely on main mix, I tend to use for mainly bass and drums individually.
Sidechaining from kick/pumping: just annoys me, I think it is a cliche that should have died in the 90’s.
Huge reverb/shimmer: messy slush that I rarely like the sound of unless on the very few occasions that it is applied well on ambient stuff.
Random/chance: I mostly find it annoying unless used in a subtle way and mostly on percussive elements rather than melodic stuff.
Arpeggios: when they are obvious sound tedious, I rarely use them as most are a bit crap, they have their use but not a staple for me.
Over warble: nothing against a bit of vibrato or the occasional bit of tape warble to add a bit of character, but overdone sounds too cliche, same for too much noise being added to tracks to add faux vintage vibes.
Obviously highly personal and not applicable all of the time - many songs I like use some of these techniques, but I don’t often use them myself, probably a bunch more that I’m forgetting too, anyway what are yours?
It’s a bit like salt on your chips.
Without salt, it’s just some hot potatoes, but a sprinkling of salt and suddenly it’s the dining choice of the Gods.
Wouldn’t eat a fucking plate full of salt though, so maybe turn the Strymon off for a bit, yeah.
Safe diatonic stuff, too much root note, triad chords. Not a Jazz elitist or anything.
Brickwalling. The loudness war was won but the cannons are still firing. Really painful on mediocre stuff that doesn’t compensate controlling transients that probably sounded snappier during the earlier stages, and now they’re all pumped up and sluggish.
Mixwide EQ approach that approximates Bandpassing everything instead of making better sounds, EQing broader strokes and using volume faders.
1/4 timesynced, lined up & quantized everything from claps to delays
Sidechaining for kicks/pumping, compression as an effect or mixing tool (I usually use multi band compression when mixing individual recordings instead), arpeggiators (great fun on their own, but rarely makes it into a piece of music), that sort of massive reverb that turns any sound into the call of a whale.
I’ll add velocity and aftertouch keyboard playing. I’ll also add tuning oscillators to 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, etc. In general, the overuse of effects like reverb and delay.
Sometimes it feels like you have to add reverb/delay to everything or you are breaking an unwritten rule. But effects have a way of detracting from the raw sound of whatever instrument you like, be it an 808 snare or a nice oscillator sound, etc.
Another might be some ‘studio rules’ like acoustic treatment, proper monitors, monitor stands, etc. that whole attitude and style of thinking is kind of gross to me. If I was a billionaire, I still would not do any of that out of principle.
So your’e a shimmer ambient, side chaining warble arp fiend who loves a pumping mix! 
