Guitar Panning.

B

Blink 182

New member
I did a couple of searches and I couldn't find anything that explained exactly what I wanted, so I apologise if I'm repeating the same old thread.

I double tracked every guitar part, including lead parts. I did this mainly because in all my mixes the guitars sound so weak. I'm quite aware you pan the tracks equally left and right when you double track, but the guitars lines are always playing something different to one another. In most mixes I've heard when this style of guitar playing is used there will be one guitar line in one speaker and the alternate guitar line in the other speaker. How would you recommend going about panning double tracked alternate guitar lines? Or was there no need to double track at all? I've tried panning the tracks in stereo, one part quite wide and the other part closer, and this sounds ok, but like I said, most mixes I've heard the guitars have seperate channels.

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks.
 
I think if you want them to be very seperate, you will need to pan each at least 75% to one side. If I understand what you want, correctly. What are you trying to emulate? Is there a commercial cd with this type of panning you are listening to?
 
It would depend on how different the guitar parts are. If you pan them both hard, is the mix lobsided?
If you have one guitar the is holding down the rhythm and the other doing a counter melody? If so, you might want to double the rhythm part and pan those, and have the other part in the middle somewhere.

All of the panning qustions depend heavily on the instrumentation and arangement.
 
I'm not really trying to emulate anything, I just don't want to do anything unorthodox.

I have four songs where I want the panning to be consistent. Each guitar line swaps continuously from a lead to a rhythm part, sometimes both playing lead but the majority of the parts are either rhythm and lead or two different rhythm parts. There are occasions where hard panning makes the mix lobsided, and others where it doesn't.

Is it technically "ok" to use a double tracked part panned to one channel? If I'm using the wrong terminology, please tell me, but I basically mean I recorded everything twice, both guitar parts. The effect of double tracking in stereo creates more or less the big sound I want, but I listen to similar styled bands to my own and each guitar part seems to have its own channel.
 
well the whole point is to achieve balance. If the guitar lines are different enough to cause an uneasy balanced feeling, then panning them opposite each other wouldn't be the best answer. Unless of course, that's what you want.

However, analyzing alot of Ron Saint Germains work, he tends to do just that. That works well when you have a strong rythm section supporting the guitar lines.


There is no specific panning anyone can tell you to achieve what you are trying to do.

I could tell you a million examples where different guitar lines where panned opposite each other, and others that wheren't.

Just use your ears.

Also, make note between the differences in:

Power Pot Panning (physical left and right)

vs

Virtual panning (panning something through delay and/or other FX)
 
What I would do in your situation is come up with a coherent rhythm part and double that. Pan them pretty wide. Overdub the leads and have them just wander in and out of the mix. That would be the difference between live and studio.
 
bands with two guitar players do pose this question... IMO it really depends on what the guitars are doing. One instance where I can think of a good example of what To do with this situation is 3 Doors Down.

Listen to some bands with 2 guitar players and see what sounds right for what your trying to do, then listen to it again and again, pick it apart and try to emulate.

Matt
 
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