Many readers over the years have asked how many mixes of a song they should record on master tapes. It’s always one of the hot topics among engineers, and as you can imagine opinions vary. Today we’ll focus on a few specific areas of concern.
1. Alternate mixes with different levels – Some engineers record as many as 10 or 12 versions of each song to master tape, each with subtle changes in the level of this or that – turn the vocal down a little and the lead guitar up, for example. The need and validity of doing this is very subjective. If you feel you want to postpone some of the decisions until later then this technique may serve you well. Generally I recommend you nail as many decisions down at mixdown as you can. Basically, get it right in the moment, or if you want to hedge your bets a little just do something simple like three versions each with the vocal 1 dB louder than the previous one. All the other minutiae should have been worked out by then, or it likely never will be. Mix it and move on is our advice.
2. Depending on the artists you should, however, do a mix with the vocal channels and their associated effects muted. This instrumental mix can come in handy later for a variety of reasons. It may eventually be used to for creating an extended dance mix, a karaoke release or as a background theme for video/film/TV/games production. An instrumental mix also provides some insurance in case the lead singer suddenly quits the band or you want to use the tracks later as demos with a singer of the opposite gender. Of course, those clever engineers who suggest a quick instrumental mix will surely be appreciated for their resourceful attitude, and over an entire album project, it only adds a couple hours to the studio billing, which the owner will appreciate.
3. Surround Mixes – If you have the capability to mix for surround you are probably doing so already. However, it’s always a good idea to pull that nice surround mix back in and do a standard two channel mix of the material as well. The algorithms that fold surround mixes back to two channels are less than great right now, so the more control you can take over this process the better your work will sound for more people.