General Guide lines as to where everything should sit in the mix??

WERNER 1

Member
I was wondering if there were any General Guidelines that suggest where each individual item should appear in the Stereo imaging of a Track/song?? (Drums, rhythm guitars, bass, vocals..............)

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rick
 
It depends (that seems to be the answer to lot of recording questions :D ).

You'll often find that vocals and bass instruments stay in the middle and everything else is panned to where it sounds good.

Try listening to lots of stuff you like or that is similar to what you're recording and see how the instruemnts are placed in those recordings.
 
It depends (you're right, Kevin! :)) upon the music style, the instruments, the vocals, and the song arrangement.

As far as "general guidelines" - for which there are always exceptions - here are a few to get started:

- Because of the omnidirectionality of bass frequencies, instruments residing solely or mostly in the bass frequencies (e.g. bass guitar, kick drum, Brad Garrett) tend to be grouped near the center of the mix because panning them has little effect long range and sounds less natural short range.

- Except in specialty genres like the many isotopes of the heavier metals and some space synth effects, hard panning is usually reserved for room ambience. In metallurgy, the opposite is often true.

- A nicely balanced mix often means keeping instruments that can easily clash in fundamental frequency ranges seperated from each other. For example, if you have two rhythm guitars (electric or acoustic, doesn't matter) that are playing independant rhythm tracks (they are not doubling lines), it's usually best to keep them seperated by at least a a couple dozen degrees in the pan space. The same can be true for a guitar and a piano.

- In general, a good balance left-to-right is accompanied by a good balance in frequency spread. In other words, try to spread the frequencies evenly L/R. A bass-heavy L and a treble-heavy R is usually not so good.

- A symmetry between lead vocal and backup vocals is usually desired. This can be something like lead vocals centered and backup vocals in a symmetrical L/R stereo spread, or it could be lead vocal mid-left and backup vocals centered on mid-right, or any variation thereof. But an imbalance in vocals (all vocals mostly left or mostly right) is usually not as good.

- If there is only one vocal, pan center unless it is, in effect, "dueting", "doubling", or otherwise sharing the spotlight with a main instrument such as lead piano or lead guitar. In that case a symmetrical balance between the vocal and the lead instrument can be in order, much as if the lead instument were a set of backgorund singers in a call/response arrangement.

- When setting up your soundstage, think three dimensionally: think not only left-to-right, but front-to back, and low freq-to-high freq as well. Keep a balance in all three of those "dimensions" and you'll find plenty of room to fit everything.

HTH,

G.
 
Yeah, real nice!

Thanks a bunch!!!

In my very limited recording experience, and extended live experience,.. it seems that the Bass, Key's (low end register), and Kick seem to try and fight for alot of the same "space" --- Do you all feel that this is true as well?? To keep these better separated, would it be best to try and eq them differently so that they don't take up the same space frequency wise, or a combination of that and panning (Being that bass is non-directional, and as stated before the panning should be kept somewhat in the middle on these = :confused: :) )

Is there a "minimum degree of separation" when it comes to panning? Or can someone sort of "mock" lay out a typical set up like : Lead vocals center, rhythm guitar 1 20% L, R. Guitar 2 - 30% R, and so on??

Sorry for being so Newbie'ish at this stuff. :o

Rick
 
To add a couple of thoughts to the excellent post above, the balancing of the sound-stage idea is important. It's very humorous these days to listen to some of the early stereo recordings where all the drums were panned hard right and all the background vocals were hard left, etc.

The idea of panning things away from center to leave room for the lead vocal is important. The other effect of panning something hard is you can reduce the volume of that track and it will still be audible. I often take things like tambourines and maracas and pan one hard left and one hard right, and then bring the volume way down. Because of the panning they remain audible at a remarkably low level and don't clutter up the mix. (All of you MORE COWBELL freaks can ignore this advice :p )

My panning pet peeve is the creation of 15 foot wide drumkits and pianos. Or anything else that isn't really 15 feet wide. I prefer a natural size, but that's a matter of taste - there is no absolute right or wrong.

A final remark on degrees of panning. There are some people who insist that no one really hears the difference between two panning positions that are 10 degrees or less apart. But I disagree. Even if you can't pick out what the difference is, it can still change the sound of the overall mix. So don't mix by a formula or by numbers - move stuff around until it sounds good.
 
WERNER 1 said:
In my very limited recording experience, and extended live experience,.. it seems that the Bass, Key's (low end register), and Kick seem to try and fight for alot of the same "space" --- Do you all feel that this is true as well?? To keep these better separated, would it be best to try and eq them differently so that they don't take up the same space frequency wise, or a combination of that and panning (Being that bass is non-directional, and as stated before the panning should be kept somewhat in the middle on these = :confused: :) )
Yeah, this can often be an issue. There are several ways that this can be approached, any one or combination of which may be used. Here's jsut a couple:

- Pan the kick about 5° one way and the bass 5° the other. As littledog correctly said, this may not be consciously audible, but it can subconsciously help seperate them. But this alone is usually not enough if the problem is pretty thick; this can often therefore be combined with...

- The "Haas effect", sometimes called the "precedence effect", is a known psychoacoustic principle that says when two similar-sounding noises of equal volume occur very close in time, the first will sound louder and/or closer. If you have a multi-track editor, you can use this in conjunction with the 5° L/R seperation by sliding either the bass track or the kick track just a millisecond or three forward or backward in the mix. (NOTE: For extra credit, slide the bass forward for a more agressive mix feel, slide the bass back for a more laid back groove.)

- Tighten up the kick sound a bit by boosting just a couple of dB somewhere around 4kHz (+/- ~500Hz) to emphasize the attack from the beater. This can add a sharpness to the kick that is not present in the bass and help make it more distinct.

There are other methods, but I'll leave some post space for others ;).

WERNER 1 said:
Is there a "minimum degree of separation" when it comes to panning? Or can someone sort of "mock" lay out a typical set up like : Lead vocals center, rhythm guitar 1 20% L, R. Guitar 2 - 30% R, and so on??
Other then the kinds of guidelines listed in my first post, no there is no "minimum degree of seperation"...unless Kevin Bacon is involved.

And yes, that kind of "mock" designation and tryout is typical. You're on the right track.

G.
 
My general approach nowadays is I'm more of a "center" man/woman myself. I try to avoid drastic panning such as hard-panning drum overheads, panning dual guitars wide, etc. although there are definitely exceptions. It does make it a little more difficult to separate instruments but I prefer the overall sound and its coherence. I try to work with instrument tone and eq. to keep some sense of separateness with the instruments. For example I may use different mic/micing technique/amp or instrument if there are two guitar players in the band to separate out the tone and the use of eq/compression will help separate out bass from the kick drum and low end of guitar by either de-emphasizing or emphasizing certain frequencies with eq or using compression to help with the attack or decrease the attack of competing frequencies (such as kick drum beater "click" vs. guitar pick) or increasing or decreasing the sustain of instruments. Also a really good music arrangement does the work for you. If all else fails along with using reverb to set instruments in the background (I do try to avoid reverb as a general rule since I mic instruments with the natural studio acoustics in mind) then I will pan and try to keep it within 15 degrees or so. However there are always exceptions and I will use extreme panning for effect or if the client requests it. Headphone candy is one good use of panning and I recently had a client request I pan everything like on the old Beatles records (hard panning the whole kit, etc.) which sounded great. I have found in my old age that lots of panning tends to make a mix too busy and distracts from the music. I'd rather hear the music than the engineer. I really hate acoustic guitars recorded in stereo and hard-panned, it drives me nuts. Especially the standard MTV approach: hard-panned, compressed, bottom end rolled off and bright and "clicky". I like the sound of wood, most people seem to like the sound of polymers.
 
sweetnubs said:
I'm more of a "center" man/woman myself.

Ahaa! a clue...

sweetnubs said:
I have found in my old age that lots of panning tends to make a mix too busy and distracts from the music. I'd rather hear the music than the engineer. I like the sound of wood, most people seem to like the sound of polymers.

Pink Floydish stuff will always sound great in a super wide, exagerated stereo field, but I agree.... most bands sound better in a more natural stereo spread with the resulting cohesion. I'd rather the engineer work more on depth than width, but width is easier to achieve, and more often what we get.
 
Ah, that was one of my next questions........"Depth"?? What makes things more "up front", or more in the "Background"?? ---- I'm guessing the tastefull use of Reverb & delay/echo?? ----- Trying to get a better grasp on the whole 3D thing :o

Here's a simple guitar track I did last night. The Drums (Betamonkey) are centered, the Rhythm guitar is Left (About 80%), and the Lead is Right (About 80%) Since the tone of the guitar is pretty much the same, do you think they are fighting for the same freq. spot in the mix......or is it "ok"?

Here's the clip: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=410286&songID=3904543

Thanks again!!

Rick
 
WERNER 1 said:
Ah, that was one of my next questions........"Depth"?? What makes things more "up front", or more in the "Background"?? ---- I'm guessing the tastefull use of Reverb & delay/echo?? ----- Trying to get a better grasp on the whole 3D thing :o
Yeah, that's a good part of it. Reverb/delay and also track volume.

Dimension 1: L/R - pan and (sometimes) delay
Dimension 2: Front/Back - volume and verb
Dimension 3: Frequency spectrum - Tracking, EQ and filtering

There is a fourth dimension that seperates good mixes from great ones, the dimension of "Drama"; basically meaning dynamic changes in the mix over time. Which instruments to use when, using changing dynamics and mix levels to accentuate song elements and moods, etc. But for someone just getting their ears wet, stick with the first three at the outset. Once one gets those fairly well internalized, then they can start playing with the fourth dimension.

Just listened to your sample; not bad. No I don;t believe the gits are getting in each other's way too much. they ae panned far enough away from each other, plus they have their own individual tones and are playing different lines so they go together fine, I think.

I would personally like to hear some more bass in there, the mix is a bit lacking on the low end. A nice rich smooth bass line would anchor it well on the bottom.

The snare has a nice crisp snap to it without much ring, I like that. However I agree with a few of the previous posts that I'm not big on really wide drums in the pan space. You have some cymbal action that sounds almost hard-panned in both directions. It's just a taste thing - no hard rules here - but for my tastes I'd close the drum kit in a bit. Keep it stereo, but say that somewhere around 30% left and right would be the extreme boundaries for them. They'd sit nicely inside the guitars that way too.

YMMV,

G.
 
(bkornaker from carvin boards)

heres my normal panning procedure.....

vocals/ lead guitar--------center
bass guitar---------------center
kick drum/snare-----------center
tom drums----------------pan 20-30% left/right
hi hats-------------------pan 10-25% left/right
cymbal crashes-----------pan 60-80% left/right
rythem guitars------------pan hard left/right 100% per guitar
additional lead guitars (harmonies)-----pan 50% left/right
synth/piano/keys---------pan 50-100% left/right (or wherever they fit in!)

but this is a very general overview that i normaly use. ill often change it accordingly to each instrument so they fit together nicely. But its a good basic refernce of where to start from, and tweak it from there.
 
:eek: :o :D

What!?!?! - You think I'm going to just sit back and let YOU have all the cool sounding guitar tracks!!?!?!?? :p NO WAY!!

These guys have helped me piece my humble home studio together from nothing to something that's some what "respectable".......over the past 3-4 years that is :o (cash is hard to come by don't you know!? )

Glen - Thanks for the informative reply! It's true, you DO learn something new everyday :)

Bass - Right now there is no bass on that clip/track......this was just an initial test track to try out an idea.......Depending on the feedback (Bryan, you're the only one thus far :( ) , I'll proceed further along with it. This track, or one like it will be sort of a Collaboration of different folks from over at the Carvin BB -- It'll mostly consist of Carvin amps and guitars ........and a lot of senseless "wanking" ;) :p

Drums - The drum track was an MP3 download that bryank put together (Thanks man!!) so the only changes I did to that was to add some verb and EQ' in a bit of upper mids and highs ;) .... make it a little crispier.

Thanks again!!

Rick
 
LOL! i just want a small guitar solo spot somewhere in the song!..........you guys can do the rest. LOL

LOL :D :p
 
I can't add much more than what has been said already. When constructing a sonic sound stage, I try to get most of the instruments fairly closely grouped around the centre, using the overflow to fill the edges. I try to avoid too many gimmiks (e.g. lead guitar panning left and right).

I don't think we should aim to emulate the referred to Beatle's type of stereo. My understanding is that those stereo recordings were made using two-track tapes that were intended for mono, i.e. mainly vocals on one side, rhythm on the other, both intended to be mixed together. My recollection is that George Martin was not pleased at the release of the material that way.
 
Thanks for anyone that posted in this cuz i learned alot from it.

Can anyone give me any advice on how to sit everything in the mix if im going for a "City of Evil" Avenged Sevenfold kinda sound???
 
WERNER 1 said:
I was wondering if there were any General Guidelines that suggest where each individual item should appear in the Stereo imaging of a Track/song?? (Drums, rhythm guitars, bass, vocals..............)

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rick

I agree Glen and Nubs did an excellent job explaining panning methods.
The only thing I would like to add, that was probably just overlooked, is panning in mono! Always when panning listen to it in mono, alot of the time hard panning 100% left/right will tend to mask those instruments in mono. Why is this important? Most subwoofers are mono, the center speaker in surround systems is mono, and you would be suprised how many people have mono systems in their cars/homes and don't even know it lol.

As for the kick drum/ bass guitar stomping on each other, I have heard some producers say that bye rule of thumb they always put a low cut about 80hz on the bass guitar. Sliding the track will sometimes make the song sound unatural to the bass player (who is usually the biggest guy in the band lol) The low cut should notch out the bass guitar enough to give room to the kick drum. Hope this helps! Good replies everyone!
 
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