Advice needed..

[MrBud]

Have recorded most of instruments and bounced them down to V2  [3 and 4]     Did background vocals on V1  [1 and 2 ]  Now i need to have 2 open tracks for lead vocal and keys...
Question;  Do i first bounce backing vocals V1 [1 and 2]  and tracks V2   [3 and 4] to ..? to make room ?
Also, what must pans be set to ? As backing vocals and instruments i want divided equally Left to right...?

Sounds a bit scattered,just don't want to screw it up ! 
Any help appreciated.
Thank you,
George

[Flash Harry]

Ah, you've got to that tricky spot. You have all the original tracks still?

It may be an opportunity to have a look at a DAW - you can use 64Guitar's fabulous software to copy the files to a PC and then use something like Reaper or Sonar to remix all the tracks.

If not, leave your pans as they are - mix the tracks to get the overall feel and bounce down. You can always re- bounce.

[Geir]

This is why I'm glad I started out on the MBR. I can't give you the answer tho, only you can do that. But try to imagine where you want the backing vocals in the final mix. My experience is that you can bounce it a bit wider than you first think. That was the panning. To the first question, if you're not gonna record any new instruments that will compete for "aural space" with the bg vox, then I'd mix the backing vocals in now, and put them just a tad louder than you think they should be. But as Mike says, you can always go back and do it again if you miss. Lord knows I've done that some times.

Good luck, you'll be better for each song you record, and in my opinion it is really good to try mixing it all on the MBR first, you learn a lot from it with regards to how a mix is put together.

[MrBud]

Thank's very much for the advice,,got to a touchy point and dident want to screw it up !
Thank's again
George

[T.C. Elliott]

I'll second the notion that it is a good idea to save the tracks somewhere to be used again later if needed. the BR WAV converter will do that nicely.

And if you do that then my best advice is to keep playing with it. Try very wide panning. Try narrow panning. Try effects like chorus on them. Try all sorts of crazy things if you can. Because that is how you learn. I still suck at recording and mixing back ground vocals so I'm really not much help. but I've been playing with it a long time and I'm better now than I once was.