Panning on 60's Recordings

Doc Holiday

Doc Holiday

New member
I don't know if this is the right forum to ask this question or not, but I've been listening to some old 60's stuff lately(Elvis and the Beatles) and I've noticed that often times the drums are panned hard to one side. Sometimes even the vocals are panned hard to one side. Was this a trend? Or was there some practical reason due to track limitations or bouncing?
 
It was an era when stereo and drug experimentation were still new and fresh. :)

Hard panning can be a very effective tool though as a method of getting the listener's attention and adding some separation and added definition to different instruments. All that really separated then from now is that we have much better reverberation effects to make hard panning more realistic by adding back some normal room ambiance in stereo that was often not properly captured in the 1960's.

Cheers! :)
 
Hey, I just did a Beatles cover with hard panning! The vox panning was done with the analog mixer by hand as I recorded the track! The other panning is digital.
 
It wasn't a style....it was a procedure done after the master tapes were turned in to the record companies....a move that infuriated most every artist/producer that it happened to. And in later years, instruments getting "nudged" to weird places in the stereo mix was simply a result of the horrible limitations of the "low-track-count" machines of those days.

Using George Martin as an example, and as he's discussed in his books/articles several times, here's what happened...

1962-63 sessions at EMI were initially recorded on 2-track machines. 1 track for instruments, 1 track for vocals/random percussion. This applied to pop artists/comedians/orchestras. Martin had tried to get hold of at least a few 3-track machines that Capitol used here in Los Angeles, but had been unsuccessful, so he was still stuck with the 2-tracks in 62. Which the Beatles were stuck with for the first 20 or so songs they recorded during the two years before they hit big here in the U.S.

To work around this when absolutely necessary, Martin would record the two tracks of music as listed above, then submix to a 2nd 2-track (onto one track in mono) and then fill the 2nd track...to sorta give him a three track machine (3..not 4) circa 1962.

The end result was a tape that could more easily be mixed....with instruments on tape track 1 and pretty much just vocals on tape track 2, you could at least use the console to get a good final mix balance between the major two elements.

Whichever way he chose for any particular session, Martin ended up making a mixed mono tape of the finished product.....mono being the preferred flavor in the UK at that moment in time...and would then send the mono mix tape AND the master 2-track reels in to the archive departments.

Two full years later, when the Beatles finally caught on here in the U.S, Capitol demanded access to the tapes..all of them...so they could monkey around with them to see how to make them work in Capitol's preferred release format..."stereophonic". Once safeties of the tapes were sent here, basically Capitol saw that there was nothing to work with...since Capitol at least had 3-track machines whereas Martin only had 2-track.

Capitol's in a panic to get something out....they don't want to do the EP route and they don't want to do only mono. So at that point, Capitol makes a marketing move (to this day...no one is taking credit for signing off on the project here in L.A) ...and everything gets screwed up. Capitol simply releases the 2-track master tapes...the work tapes ....in their unmixed left-right condition....and called it "stereophonic".

Martin was really angry about that one. But he was..at that moment in time..simply a staff producer and had no clout. Neither did the Beatles.

The same type of thing then mushroomed for other pop acts using 2-track. Stereo had been around since 1957 or so, but with pop music suddenly becoming huge, the light bulb went off in the record company's heads that you could make twice the profit if you release a mono lp and a "stereo" lp for those lucky folks who had stereo systems back then. The only catch of course, is that this stuff wasn't stereo. It was "weird-eo".

Then THAT idea begat the taking of final mono mixes (where the work tapes got lost or couldn't be found) and "rechannelizing" them for "stereo". That was another very bogus move......but...for the times....they were all that was available to fill the "stereo" pipeline with pop music.

Most of this is detailed by Producers in their respective books. And when you read their comments, you see how angry they all were about it.

There was also then the situation beginning in 66 where there was so much overdubbing and submixing going on by EVERYONE, that it was almost certain that something was going to end up in a strange pan position....like drums.

Releases were now coming out in "real" stereo...ie:..well at least we all now finally had pan pots on consoles in order to mix to intermediate positions between two speakers....but tracking was still predominantly happening with one instrument or vocal going to one mono tape track. Track count was still too low and precious to be wasting tracks on stereo mics, etc for most pop music. Overdub rhythm guitar on two separate tracks? No way Jose. We'll overdub ten rhythm guitars...BUT...stick them all on one submixed track. That's the way it was back then.

Using the Beatles as an example, stuff like Penny Lane consists of 47-50 tracks of individual instruments/vocals (now that one can see the separate tracks after the Protools transfers from all the various 1" reels a few years ago). At the time that song was being built up, the drums and bass were added on and erased quite a few times.....before the song was even halfway done! As the endless submixes were being made to open up tracks on the 4-track machines for further overdubs, decisions had to be made on which instruments to leave for last...because the noise and distortion build up from submixing was getting so bad. So...in a lot of cases, drums and bass were left for last....AND...since they were recorded in mono at the tracking dates....this meant that when they were finally overdubbed in, there might still be a few more instruments/vocals to add...which in the process of further submixing..."pushed" the drums left or right in the final final mixes.

And there was no way around it...at that time.

When I hear the new ProTools stereo...real stereo..and surround mixes for things like "Penny Lane", they are so beautiful with the new "natural" placement of the original instruments and vocals. Stuff that was previously buried and in weird pan positions is now revealed and is...breathtaking!

When you listen to the new mixes, then read the books detailing the original sessions, it makes one appreciate how frustrating it was to be at the mercy of the equipment back then. That comment comes up by these folks over and over and over.

I have a few of those dual-mono albums from back then. When you compare the dual-mono version of say "Please Please Me" to the final mono mix of the song, you see how much stronger the final mono release version is..due to the mix and the mastering done. This all gets lost when you listen to the record made from the work tapes....er..dual-mono...er ...."stereophonic" version of that song.....so some of the vision of Martin/Emerick gets lost there too. No wonder they were so angry about it.
 
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BRDTS is dead on. Thanks for the great explanation for the uninitiated!

That said, I'd like to chime in and give you this bit of opinion (which you may have heard elsewhere): the only way to enjoy the Beatles (Please Please Me through The White Album) is in mono. Those were the mixes that the Beatles were present for, and given great care to from the engineers and Martin. If you look at the Beatles sessions book, you'll realize that the engineers spent very little time on any stereo mix, if they made one at all. If you haven't heard the original UK mono mixes, you're in for a treat: Helter Skelter rocks harder than you'd think the Beatles could rock, the flange on Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds is far more intense than the tepid stereo mix, and in general, the band is more "together" and the overall sound is punchier.

Lots of gray market CDs are available, taken from mint original UK LPs or Japanese LPs. You can find some of these on Usenet, especially in the Beatles binaries group. Look for releases by Doctor Ebbetts, Mirror Spock, and my favorite, the Millenium Remasters.
 
I was listening to Bob Dylans "John Wesley Harding" in the car today and if you pan to the left its just bob and his guitar. Drums are panned hard right. It's actually drums panned hard right vocals and bass in the middle guitar to the left. I always thought this was an intentional mixing style I never knew it was forced on them.
 
Thanks for all the great information. I love the music from this period. I don't know if it is because of the equipment or the performances, but the music has a vibe that I find is missing in much of todays music. BTW, I am a store manager for a national cd retail chain and I am forced to listen to our in store playlist of popular rap, alternative and country music for hours on end every day. I don't here anything inspiring there.
 
citizenkeith said:
BRDTS is dead on. Thanks for the great explanation for the uninitiated!

That said, I'd like to chime in and give you this bit of opinion (which you may have heard elsewhere): the only way to enjoy the Beatles (Please Please Me through The White Album) is in mono. Those were the mixes that the Beatles were present for, and given great care to from the engineers and Martin. If you look at the Beatles sessions book, you'll realize that the engineers spent very little time on any stereo mix, if they made one at all. If you haven't heard the original UK mono mixes, you're in for a treat: Helter Skelter rocks harder than you'd think the Beatles could rock, the flange on Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds is far more intense than the tepid stereo mix, and in general, the band is more "together" and the overall sound is punchier.

Lots of gray market CDs are available, taken from mint original UK LPs or Japanese LPs. You can find some of these on Usenet, especially in the Beatles binaries group. Look for releases by Doctor Ebbetts, Mirror Spock, and my favorite, the Millenium Remasters.
Click to expand...

I had to revive this post. I was lucky enough to come across an original mono copy of a "yesterday & today" lp in near mint playable condition and now I wanna hear them all that way. I'd think original mono Beatle records in playable condition these days must be hard to get. But I have to agree with what was said here. They sound really good and quite different from the later releases.
 
As already noted, on some records (early Beatles, most obviously) the records were really recorded to be mixed to mono, and the hard-panning is the result of trying to market a "stereo" version out of what was available.

But, even putting that to the side:

Panning was strange by today's standards, even on records that were recorded from the start to be released in stereo, such as later Beatles records. The drums hard-panned one way is an obvious example. Often backing vocals and single instruments were hard-panned.

It may be partly still the result of technical limitations. Even on an 8-track recorder, you'd be forced to do bounces, which ultimately limits your flexibility at mixdown.

It's probably more a matter of taste and novelty. Stereo was new in the early '60s, and lots of consumers were plunking down money to upgrade to stereo. The combination of the new ability to pan stuff, plus the marketeers'/consumers' desire for stereo to be really different from boring old mono, resulted in extreme panning and tricks like moving sound effects across the field.

Sometime in the '70s, a panning orthodoxy took over, with the new approach being to make it less noticeable.
 
SteveMac said:
I had to revive this post. I was lucky enough to come across an original mono copy of a "yesterday & today" lp in near mint playable condition and now I wanna hear them all that way. I'd think original mono Beatle records in playable condition these days must be hard to get. But I have to agree with what was said here. They sound really good and quite different from the later releases.
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Check out Steve Hoffman's music forum. There is a lot of info on Beatle's LP's, remasters, ect...
 
man you hear hard panned stuff on jimi hendrix stuff all the time. I always thought it was intentional. I'll have to go back and listen to see if the two sides are actually more like "stems". weird.
 
I think it would be friggin' cool to have a studio that included the same tape machine, and console as used on those early beatles sessions. Maybe the 4 track version.

Or maybe that would be such a pain in the ass, you'd wanna sell it all back to the Smithsonian.

-callie-
 
Doc Holiday said:
Check out Steve Hoffman's music forum. There is a lot of info on Beatle's LP's, remasters, ect...
Click to expand...

Who's Steve Hoffman? I went to that site and got sucked into reading a 3 page thread about Keanes new album.
 
SteveMac said:
Who's Steve Hoffman? I went to that site and got sucked into reading a 3 page thread about Keanes new album.
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He's a Mastering Engineer. He does a lot of vinyl stuff. I think he is doing the vinyl version of the new Red Hot Chilli Peppers album. Anyway, check out the music corner in the forums for lots of Beatles info.
 
what about hendrix? I was listening to some at work, and one of the speakers accidentally cut off-- no guitar or vocals! it was on a RI/ Remastered recording, too.

forget what song it was-- maybe "castles made of sand" or "burning of the midnight lamp for oil" or something softer and straightforward.
 
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