Firstly, a disclaimer. This question and the debate it gives rise to has come up quite a few times and the resultant furore has already happened so you may not get a long thread with lots of varying opinions. There again, onye ma echi ?*
Why is it that some albums have hi hats obviously panned on the left and the ride on the right (almost like mixed backwards...?)
Well, a couple of reasons. Some drummers are right handed, some are left handed. So some have the hats and rides on different sides. Also, engineers have preferences as to how to mix drums within the soundstage, as do band members and producers. Notwithstanding a sometime urge to experiment.
and then some albums have the drums all the way panned right like on Disraeli Gears comes to mind...
Have you also noticed that this has been relatively rare for three decades now ? It happens, yes, but it's particularly noticeable when it does because it's so unusual. "Disraeli gears" was recorded and came out in 1967. Jimmy, Greg, Steenamaroo and a host of current and past players on this site weren't even alive ! Recording technology was only just beginning to emerge from it's infancy and though eight track recorders were around, the norm was still 4 track. Things like layering were only just making the transition from thought to expression and actually putting three or four mics on a drumkit was then considered a luxury. It's interesting you mention Disraeli gears because it reminds me of an interview I read 22 years back in which Jack Bruce, Cream's bassist/vocalist laughs at the fact that at a gig somewhere, they had one mike on Ginger Baker's drums. He had two bass drums, loads of toms, percussion and a host of cymbals.
The main reason the drums in those days were panned all the way to one side was for maximum separation, so you could hear the drums better, apparently. Then of course, you had some where the bass drum is hard left with the snare hard right. Some of them sound pretty good.
do you typically mix the drums "normal" like centered kick, hat panned slightly right, ride panned slightly left, toms as they appear.. etc..
I just find this interesting and was wondering everyones take on this
Central~ish. If you were looking head on at the kit, I put the snare ever so slightly to the right, the hi hat {if I've specifically recorded it} a little more right of that, the bass drum ever so slightly left. I also close mike the toms because I'm kind of lousy at getting a full tom sound that I like just with the overheads.The overheads pick up the kit as a whole depending on how I place them so the cymbals and toms are as they come. Then they get panned depending on what I think sounds good for that particular song.The reason I leave the absolute centre free of drummage is so the bass and any vocals can go there. Personally, I find little noticeable difference between centre and central~ish. But that's just me. I do drums just a little better than I free fall sky dive.
Also, how many of you use sampled drums rather than miking up a full kit and a real drummer?
I'm in the fortunate position of being friends with people that play drums that are willing to help me sometimes, so I use humans.
However, there's a caveat to that. There's been a number of times recently when I've been hot to trot and there's a song I just
have to get down, but none of the guys have been about to drum. So what I've done has been to take drum performances from other already recorded songs and use them. Kind of recycling. Because I have something like 90~100 songs in various states of development, but 95% of them have drum tracks down, there exist lots of interesting variations and patterns and as I'm formulating the song in my mind, I'm going through in my head the songs recorded in the last couple of years to see if any drum patterns or feels approximate what I'm currently coming up with. I make a note of them. Then as I come to put the drum bit together, because I have two of the same recorder {a 12 track Akai}, it's easy to just transfer the tracks over and then assemble a complete performance. Where levels differ, on final assembly, I bring them up or down and also, if I want an extra beat here or there or need to disguise a join, a cymbal crash works wonders. But it has to sound natural and in context. I change things about sufficiently to bear no relation to the song the drums were copped from in the first place. And it's all real drums.
There have been two or three occasions where for some inexplicable reason, the bass drum track has dropped out {maybe the mic stopped working} and I've played the part using one of the bass drum samples from Sampletank. It has loads of kits in it and they're ok. Nothing I'd want to use. But it's less of a problem to replace the bass drum than anything else. Anything else and what I'd do would be to sample a hit or two in a particular song I've recorded and just manually, and labouriously put the hits where they should go.
For me the sampling is a last resort where something has gone wrong as opposed to my default position.
*Who knows tomorrow ?
). I would always think that panning should be to the audience perspective. However as has been said, don't go nuts with the panning the drummers arms are not 8ft long.
