To pan or not to pan

[Jaster]

I plan on mixing at least two guitars, bass, drums, and vocals. Could anyone the best way to pan each instrument? Any and all help is appreaciated.

[HotRats]

I'll start with classic pan fot this kind of setup:

bass & lead vocals: center;
background vocals: you choose.
guitars: one L and one R. hard panning (from 70 to 100%) usually works fine;
Drums: kick, snare in the center; toms light panned around; hi-hat...form center to hard panned, dipending on your likes and on the leakeage of hh in the snare track.

[gecko zzed]

The suggestion by Hotrats is pretty reasonable, and worth a try.

I am not a keen fan of hard panning, and preferred to keep things in from the edges.

There are a couple fo things you can consider.

1 you can imagine the stero space in front of you as a stage, and place the instruments where they would appear if they were on that stage.

2 at the same time, you need to think about the balance between left and right, from a dyanmic point of view (the relative loudness of instruments) and a tonal perspective.

[2Kickdrums]

The only items that I leave hard panned are the toms, everything else is
straight up most of the time.

I like to pan backing vocals, and dueling leads. Sometimes I'll roll on the
pan 'real time' during a vocal passage, or lead for a dynamic effect.

Other percussion (like triangle, bongos) sound great with some panning,
but like mentioned above it's all about balance. An obvious hard pan at
the wrong time/place just kills the recording in my opnion.

There's no wrong answer that's for sure. If everyone recorded the same
way, it would be a boring topic to discuss.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Jaster

Could anyone the best way to pan each instrument?

By not following any specific recipes. Producing music should be a creative art, not an assembly-line fabrication. Imagine the song in your head, listening particularly to the arrangement and whatever the main elements and hooks are. Start imagining how panning will make it sound the most interesting or will provide the panning "picture" you are forming in your head.

G.

[Jaster]

Thanks everybody. Ive decided to just go with what Hotrats said and tweak it from there if need be.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Jaster

Thanks everybody. Ive decided to just go with what Hotrats said and tweak it from there if need be.

How will you know "if need be"? If you know what you want, then just do it. If you don't know, then you'll never know "if need be".

G.

[Waltz Mastering]

Originally Posted by gecko zzed

you can imagine the stero space in front of you as a stage, and place the instruments where they would appear if they were on that stage.

I remember seeing this video by Andy Johns a while back and he said he rarely hard panned drums and was saying you get a much more focused sound if say, the farthest panning is 11-2 or 10:30 -1:30.... and this sort of made a lot of sense.,if you think about it. On stage there wouldn't be a cymbal and tom by the one guitar player on the left and also one on the right. I think keeping it a bit more focused in the center also clears out a little room for the hard panned stuff. Also good to check for phase problems in mono.

[Seafroggys]

There's enough bleed between my two drum OH's that if I hard pan its still relatively center sounding.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Seafroggys

There's enough bleed between my two drum OH's that if I hard pan its still relatively center sounding.

In that case, the "bleed" is actually the meat of the stereo information. Hard-panning a stereo signal simply reproduces the stereo image as it appeared to the microphones; you're just sending the left channel left and the right channel right so that you're getting true full stereo reproduction. Add to that the fact that usually much of your sound is coming from the snare, kick, and rack tom, which in most kit setups are all going to be fairly well-centered in the stereo image no matter how wide you set your pan.

If you pan your stereo OH's hard L/R , that will basically reproduce a stereo image of the kit that will basically more or less full the entire soundstage (unless the overheads were set wider than the width of the drum kit.) So if you're trying to reproduce a full band image as if they were on a stage and you were in the front row center of the audience, you would not typically hard-pan the drums (unless the drummer was playing a 25-ft wide kit from "the Land of the Giants" ). That's when you'd want to do something like what Tom is talking about, where you actually narrow-pan - but STILL pan - the image to make the drum kit appear to be the proper size relative to the larger stage.

A neat trick/advantage to this is that it also allows you to place the drums off-center if you wish, something which I sometimes enjoy doing. If you wanted to make it appear that the drum riser was just to the right of center, for example, you might pan the left channel down the center and the right channel at right 30°, or something like that.

G.

[Monkey Allen]

Just do it in mono...it'll sound awesome!

[HotRats]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

How will you know "if need be"? If you know what you want, then just do it. If you don't know, then you'll never know "if need be".

G.

I suppoes he know what he wants but he needs an advice.

[HotRats]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

In that case, the "bleed" is actually the meat of the stereo information. Hard-panning a stereo signal simply reproduces the stereo image as it appeared to the microphones; you're just sending the left channel left and the right channel right so that you're getting true full stereo reproduction. Add to that the fact that usually much of your sound is coming from the snare, kick, and rack tom, which in most kit setups are all going to be fairly well-centered in the stereo image no matter how wide you set your pan.

If you pan your stereo OH's hard L/R , that will basically reproduce a stereo image of the kit that will basically more or less full the entire soundstage (unless the overheads were set wider than the width of the drum kit.) So if you're trying to reproduce a full band image as if they were on a stage and you were in the front row center of the audience, you would not typically hard-pan the drums (unless the drummer was playing a 25-ft wide kit from "the Land of the Giants" ). That's when you'd want to do something like what Tom is talking about, where you actually narrow-pan - but STILL pan - the image to make the drum kit appear to be the proper size relative to the larger stage.

A neat trick/advantage to this is that it also allows you to place the drums off-center if you wish, something which I sometimes enjoy doing. If you wanted to make it appear that the drum riser was just to the right of center, for example, you might pan the left channel down the center and the right channel at right 30°, or something like that.

G.

Intresting vision.
I've never mixed in this way, I suppose is not my dna but I think I'll make some experiments.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by HotRats

Intresting vision.
I've never mixed in this way, I suppose is not my dna but I think I'll make some experiments.

Agian, it all depends upon the producer's/engineer's vision for the mix. It's just one of a million ways to do it. It is (IMHO, FWTW) especially helpful if one is creating a soundtrack meant to simulate a real sound stage in a more documetary-like style.

It can also be helpful in cases where the sound stage is getting crowded and one might want to localize the drums a bit more without just throwing everything down the center. One fine example I had several years ago now was a mix where they wanted to add a guy on bongos in post. By sliding the drums to one side a little, it gave me room to stick the bongos slightly to the other side to provide a nice syncopated wall of percussion behind the rest of the mix.

G.

[dodgeaspen]

Originally Posted by HotRats

I'll start with classic pan fot this kind of setup:

bass & lead vocals: center;
background vocals: you choose.
guitars: one L and one R. hard panning (from 70 to 100%) usually works fine;
Drums: kick, snare in the center; toms light panned around; hi-hat...form center to hard panned, dipending on your likes and on the leakeage of hh in the snare track.

That's about right.

[BenignVanilla]

My two cents...

I look at the stage in mind's eye (unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, my eye is on stage so...), and place the instruments accordingly. Lead guitar 70%ish left, rhythm guitar 70% rightish. Drums down the center. Lead vocals down the center. Bass to the center, or a few percent off to the right.

Backing vocals go on the "outside" edges of all of this.

Bells, whistles, and shakers...go hard left or right depending on where they fit in the mix.

Solos...nearly up the middle, but maybe 10% ish toward which instrument is doing it, see above panning of guitars.


And then I often...put my mouse on the pan...close my eyes, and play with the pan a bit. The guitars, for me, seem to pop when you find the right spot, and staring at the DAW is for me the worst way to do this.

[Seafroggys]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Agian, it all depends upon the producer's/engineer's vision for the mix. It's just one of a million ways to do it. It is (IMHO, FWTW) especially helpful if one is creating a soundtrack meant to simulate a real sound stage in a more documetary-like style.

It can also be helpful in cases where the sound stage is getting crowded and one might want to localize the drums a bit more without just throwing everything down the center. One fine example I had several years ago now was a mix where they wanted to add a guy on bongos in post. By sliding the drums to one side a little, it gave me room to stick the bongos slightly to the other side to provide a nice syncopated wall of percussion behind the rest of the mix.

G.

Ah yeah, I did exactly what you described with the drums, but with congas. I had my drums typically 100% L/R, but I didn't want my congas stretched as wide, so I did like 80% L/20% R to localize it but still have stereo sound.

[HotRats]

Originally Posted by Seafroggys

Ah yeah, I did exactly what you described with the drums, but with congas. I had my drums typically 100% L/R, but I didn't want my congas stretched as wide, so I did like 80% L/20% R to localize it but still have stereo sound.

I sometimes do that also with other stereo sources like a piano or keyboards.

[legionserial]

I tend to just shut my eyes and twiddle the pan knob until the instrument in question sounds like it's sitting in the right place. You guys sure like to make things complicated.

[legionserial]

Originally Posted by dodgeaspen

That's about right.

What...for everything?