5 Alternate Mixes All Engineers Should Be Doing

Written by Willie Green. Published: Tuesday, January 25, 2011.

The days of the cassette Maxi-Single are long gone, and 12” singles are few and far between, but it is still extremely important to print alternate mixes of your songs. Recalling a mix months or even years later is a huge pain, this process will save you tons of time and headache. Also, getting all these versions mastered at the same time will save money, which is always good.

There are five basic different mixes you’ll need, although this number can grow quickly depending on how many options you want. These five are: Main Mix, Radio Edit (if necessary), A Capella, Instrumental, and TV.

1. Main Mix

The name speaks for itself. This is your mix, and what all the other versions will be based off of. Along with the previously mentioned alt. versions, you may decide to print slight variations of this ie: “Vocal Up”, “Bass Down” or anything else you feel non-committal about.

2. Radio Edit

Do not think that just because you make indie rap songs that you don’t need clean versions. I myself have been guilty of spreading this mistruth in the past, and it is nothing more than that — untrue. Some blogs insist on clean versions, and most licensing deals/placements will want an edit. Doing your edits during the mix rather than later will give you a little more flexibility. Perhaps you want to replace your curses with sound effects. I like to reverse mine in a way that you can still figure out what the word was (I’m old school like that). Or, maybe you just want to mute the word completely; any of these options is better than reversing the entire mastered song later, that just sounds like an after-thought.

You may use this opportunity to print a clean A Capella too. This isn’t often requested, but might be useful for remixers.

3. A Capella

A very common alternate version, but for the newbies who don’t know, it’s all the vocals with no music. It’s pretty straightforward, but here are a couple tips for professional A Capellas:

When printing A Capellas, effects sends are a matter of taste. Within the entire main mix, your reverbs and delays may be tucked in nicely, but take out all the music and suddenly they’re way too loud. It’s up to you whether you leave them as is, turn them down, or mute them all together.

4. Instrumental

This one is obvious – mute all the vocals. As with the A Capella, listen through and make sure there are no rouge vocal effect tails, and if your session isn’t well organized, you might even have a spare vocal on a track it shouldn’t be. Mute these and you’re all set.

5. TV

This one is often forgotten, but quite important, although not for the studio. TV Track is the actual name of what is also known as a “Show Track;” it is your song minus the lead vocal. The name comes from exactly where it sounds like, artists would go on TV without their full band and backup singers, and the track needed to sound full. The hook is kept in, for singers any harmonies are kept, and some rappers even prefer to have their dubs and ad libs kept. This is not the same as performing over your entire main mix, which is lame. Having these supporting vocals can really give your performance more impact. (I once came across a CD of Black Album-era Jay-Z TV tracks in a studio I used to work at. It was in a box destined for the trash, it is now in a box of my personal collection).

The process is pretty straight-forward, just mute the lead vocal, and anything the artist may want to say live, like ad libs in the intro, etc. When printing TV tracks for singers especially, touch base with the artist before doing it and see which ad libs during the song they plan on singing, and which they want to keep.

Don’t forget, if there are any curses in the remaining vocals, print a clean TV version too.

Since you may possibly want a “Bass Up” or “Guitar Down” alternate version of your song, ideally you’ll want those same options throughout all your different mixes. Clearly, the number of mixes you print can multiply very quickly, but you’ll really appreciate not having to go back to the studio to print the “Clean TV Keys Down in Chorus” mix. If everything is labeled correctly, you should have no problem down the line getting the version you need for any situation.

Category: Pro-Logic

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