Doublehelix wrote:So barring taking a picture of the fader/knob layout for each song, I am going to need to mix it once, and move one...which actually could be a good thing!!!
What you need to do in a situation like this is create a "Recall Sheet". It's not a bad idea to have one for any equipment you have. Of course, if you're just working on your own little projects and not trying to make a full record, it may not be totally necessary, but if you're EVER going to want to go back (or someone else might want to redo later in another studio), it's nice to have. It's not always exact- it's not like total recall or anything- but it gives you a starting point for where you had your settings on your vocal compressor, what frequency you were boosting or cutting on the guitar channel, by how many dB's, where your faders were, etc.
You pretty much want to document all this stuff once you print your mix. That is unless, of course, you don't care. But if you do, you may want to have them handy. when you print your mix, do a backup do DVD or CD or whatever (actually, do two), and pop it in a large envelope with your mix docs. Keep 'em safe.
This is an example recall sheet:
Mackie 1604
So you just basically have a graphic layout of your gear and pencil in where your knobs were, what channel it was on, what was going into that channel, where it's going out to (including processing i.e. from vocal SM57 -> RNC and /or to Alesis Bitrman ->cubase, roughly). Now you can at least go back if, for example, you printed a great mix but now listening to the whole record you realize you could stand to bring the guitars up a little, etc.