is there a chart or list of panning width for instruments in a mix somewhere? i've looked for some type of "rule" and never found anything
The question at the start of the quote is actually not a dumb or unusual question at all. Given that the art of panning is more than 60 years old now and has kind of settled into something approaching a consensus in the minds of many and given the comments, ranging from incredulous through savage to derisory that sometimes flow when, for example, discussing something like mono drums or hard panned drums or even things like 'vocals on one side, music on the other' or panning in previous decades and given that there are charts covering so many things {optimum mixing positions to bass waves to hearing capability at various ages
etc etc etc} in music recording, shaping and listening, then is it really surprising that someone, somewhere, should eventually ask if such a chart exists ?
I'm not at all surprised.
Such a chart or website probably does exist somewhere and the OP just hasn't come across it yet. There's not much that can't be found in cyberspace, for better or worse.
i pan to make my mix sound like everyone else's mix
If you are fairly new to mixing or a bit stuck or not particularly gifted or good in that area, there's no shame in doing that. Many of us, especially on the home recording circuit, are thrilled and inspired by what we've heard other people do. People's mixes that we are impressed by come at us in a certain way and trying to emulate is, I'd say, a pretty normal thing to do. That's partly how we learn from one another. Then as we get a bit better and get more confident, we branch out and start doing things more and more our own way and eventually, we may track and maybe even write with our mix at least partly in the back of our mind.
Trying to emulate what someone else already does well is a
useful place to start but a shameful place to remain.
i would think that most pros follow some type of general panning plan
I agree.
I've read hundreds of interviews and dozens of books in which engineers and producers speak about what they do and how and I've read tons of tomes on mixing and how to etc
{not that it appears to have done me much good !!
} and I've taken careful note of what the guys here on HR have said over the last 5 years as well as going back into the archives back to 1999 and I've come to the inescapable conclusion that a significantly large number of people whether pro or superb mixer though not pro
{little to no difference in my book} do have a rough plan in their minds when it comes to panning.
I'm not saying that every panned instrument is exactly the same in percentage terms but there is a rough similarity in so much of the music one hears in terms of instrument placement that it's seriously bucking the odds to conclude it's all coincidence.
I've never forgotten what was written in the manual of the Fostex X15, my first multitracker, regarding mixing. It said something like
....aside from the accepted practice of putting the bass and vocal in the centre, there are no rules. Mixing is far more art than science
So though there were "no rules" there were "accepted practices." Hmmm.
for example: i always panned my double tracked guitars 100% L/R, but recently i've been told that many people only pan them 80%
The question that's straining at my leash is "were you happy or unhappy with your guitars panned at 100% L/R before someone mentioned 80% ?"
In a way, sheer experimental curiosity or mixing logic should at some point nudge you into trying all kinds of different L/R combinations for your guitars, just to see how they sound to you in the mix of whichever song you're trying it in.
But the quest for pan percentage numbers are really just a front for the larger point about
where instruments are usually placed in the mix and it is now almost standard practice to pan guitars opposite each other in some way, shape or form. Not many people would have two guitars in a song and pan them both to the left. So there are, however unconsciously, forms of panning "laws" at work. Precise, definitive, never to be deviated from percentages are, in my view, kind of extreme {although there will be some that may swear by them} but the principle they underscore certainly is not.
where can i get some type of definitive answer on this question?
It gets picked up by osmosis via opinion and can be reinforced by the music one listens to. But even if you were to find a 'definitive' that you'd be happy with, you may find that it would in reality be a straitjacket.