Panning spare arrangements

D

deafen

New member
I'm working on a jazzy tune with a very spare arrangement (fingerpicked electric guitar, fretless bass, and vocals) and have been unsatisfied with any of the panning schemes I've tried.

If I pan everything center, it seems flat, since the only stereo information comes from the verb, which I've left pretty low. The guitar also gets in the way of the vocal.

If I pan the guitar to one side, the imaging goes all lopsided, since there's nothing to balance it out. Moving the bass is worse.

Any suggestions?
 
Sometimes it helps me to come up with some impressions as to what might be some reasonable sonic image options and go from there.
For a small combo like that, you could go with a moderate amount of width and spread on the instruments -like in a live situation where there are a combination of good directional cues, but not necessarily wide panned, but also somewhat broad broad images, either from some partial 'stereo' or dual mic tricks, or maybe some small-to medium room reflections.
A good example would be how a bass in a live setting can be 'pinpointed' on stage and yet have aspects that are omni-directional.
Just got to go to the tool kit and grab the right hammer right? :D
Wayne
 
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Maybe split the bass at around 250 Hz and pan its highs opposite the guitar (not too wide); use a stereo effect on the vocals.
 
deafen said:
I'm working on a jazzy tune with a very spare arrangement (fingerpicked electric guitar, fretless bass, and vocals) and have been unsatisfied with any of the panning schemes I've tried.

If I pan everything center, it seems flat, since the only stereo information comes from the verb, which I've left pretty low. The guitar also gets in the way of the vocal.

If I pan the guitar to one side, the imaging goes all lopsided, since there's nothing to balance it out. Moving the bass is worse.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Keep the bass in the center and beyond that do not worry about the mixing being lopside. Listen to any of the the great jazz recording from the late 60s and early 70s. Totally lopsided. Drums panned hard left, piano hard right, sax over on top pf the drums etc.
 
Try this,
Copy your guitar track to another track. Pan one track left, the other right(how far is for u to deside but on a scale from 1 to 100 i'll put it around +/-40/45)
Then a trick that works very well for me: Eq both guitar tracks slightly diffrent. For example, one with more low frequenties and the other with more high frequenties. Don't overdo this. Just enough to make them sound a little bit diffrent.
You can also ad diffrent fx to the diffrent guitar tracks. But i dont know how far u want to go.
Now you have room in the middle for you vocals. But keep in mind, Mix your vocal sound first until you'r pleased with it, than mix the guitars and bass around it.

Hope this helps
 
if you ran direct and have an amp reamp the guitar signal and send it oposite of the direct sound if you amped it reamp it anyway and change the eq and pan it out
 
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