Does this panning sound right

[Elmo89m]

Im in a hard alternative rock band and would like to now if this panning sounds right to you guys. double mic the amp for rhytmn guitar and pan all the way right with one and left with the other...single mic lead guitar when overdubbing and pan 35% left. single mic the bass(overdub) and but it 30% right...With four mics on the drums i try to recreate the order that they are setup up but still leave room for the other instruments. so lo tom far right. . kick a little right of middle.hi tom a little left of middle and snare far left...then i put vocals dead center....what do ya think?

[Bartman]

Hey Elmo,

Let me spare you some grief you may catch.

Your post title is the answer to your question.

No one can tell you if your panning "sounds" right without hearing the tune. All they can do is give you some very general guidelines like snare and bass are often (not always) centered OR "try to re-create the soundstage". Both are good starting points to get you running but are not the definitive answer.

It depends on the song, what sound you are looking for and many other factors.

Experiment with many different combinations, share them with your friends bandmates, etc....then decide what works for you.

Good luck dude.

Bart

[Elmo89m]

right...okay thanks

[Farview]

The kick, snare, bass, and vocals should be panned center. Panning things with a lot of low end content can cause problems. If you take a good listen to your CD collection, you will find that these instruments are almost universally panned up the middle. The overheads can be panned wide. With only 2 toms, I tend to pan them center as well, with 3 toms I have the floor tom panned center and the other 2 about 20% each way. I tend to double the rhythm guitars and pan them (how far depends on the song and how many mics I am using) and overdub the leads and pan them center (unless there are a lot of lead harmonies)

[Elmo89m]

i cant put vocals bass kick and snare in the same spot can i? itll get cramped

[Farview]

Listen to your CD collection, You will find that that is how things are commonly done. The center position is where things will have the most power. Kick, bass, snare and vocals should be taking up diffeent parts of the spectrum. The snare and vocals normally have some sort of reverb or other effect that spreads them out and gives them a stereo feel. The overheads will do this for the drums even with all the individual mics panned to the center. If you pan things the way you suggest, the mix will not have a focus and will get terribly lob-sided depending on the arraingment of the song.

[corban]

To elaborate on farview's post a bit, because the snare, kick, bass, and vocals all have distinct sounds and occupy different frequency ranges, you don't have to worry as much about them meshing together (with the possible exception of kick and bass, but even those should emphasize different frequencies). In terms of finding a distinct space for instruments, panning is often secondary to things like reverb and eq. Throwing the two guitar mics left and right is a good idea, because those will sound very similar and blend together no matter what, so the panning gives them a distinct space. However, panning the snare far left is not a good idea because nothing else really sounds like a snare, so it's not fighting with anything for space, and because snare is a crucial part of the song. If you're sitting on the right side of a car and can hardly hear the snare because it's way over on the left, the recording is going to sound unbalanced, whereas missing out on one guitar mic isn't going to affect the sound that much.

Panning is also useful for giving a realistic stereo representation of the instrument, which is why stereo overheads are cool for drums, and why I still do pan the toms going from left to right. But like farview said, not a hard pan, only 20-30%.

I do find it funny that bartman rightly pointed out that there's no right answer and we preceded to say: here's the way everyone does it, that's the way to do it. So remember these are guidelines, and you can do things differently if you're doing it for a reason, but we're just saying it might not sound as good.