I will add to be aware of mud..For instance you can put a frequency spectrum analyser on your master, or individual tracks, Reaper has it built in for free as a plugin for instance. and some EQ's have it built i, so it's easy to see what's happening, and what happens once you change the EQ settings..So, cut the instruments that don't need the bottom, just to leave space for the bass and kick etc..same goes with mid tones and top. I'ts interesting feeding a noise type of signal and sweep through the frequencies to first of all figure out how your cans or speakers fair.
Chances are your room isn't treated optimally, or your speakers can't handle the whole frequency spectrum in a linear (to your ears/mind) fashion..That's why it helps checking with the tools you have available, like an engineer, and then going in and cutting and boosting where aplicable.
Another important thing is compression, parallell, multiband, and limiting..That can help a lot to get the mix you want. Looped or not.. At the end of the day, without a sound guy doing the riding, and if you don't have exp pedals for managing each individual volume, you'll have to rely on your own dynamic handling capablilites. And also there are auto-rider type plugins, though I dunno how much better that would be than setting your comp and limiter settings..Also lastly, learn about gain staging, and setup your chain properly, and lastly, make a headphone mix for YOU, and a master mix for the room, cause playing live you'd want to have your current instrument louder than the loops and once the loop is recorded, you'd want the next thing you play live to be louder than the loops, so you kinda need two mixes with separate outputs, headphone or not...These are also on my own "to do" list :)
