Panning Tips please!

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Zachyboy4

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hey. i am having a horrible time getting the mix right for a project i am working on, and i think its because i have the panning wrong. i set all of the frequencies for the tracks, and i have it all panned out to pretty much a minimum. because when i spread it out (which means i just about guess on everything) i end up with too much noise in one side and/or sounds that just don't have a spot but i don't want to trash them. like percussive taps, sidesticks, and hats mostly. mostly percussive tracks.

Any tips?
 
What tracks are you trying to pan....specifically names and numbers.
 
Leave the snare and kick centered. I pan my left and right OH's hard (100%) accordingly.
 
What tracks are you trying to pan....specifically names and numbers.
Click to expand...

im trying to pan everything i guess. Im leaving most of my synths and pads pretty much centered, because thats where i think that action is. and i haven't touched the bass and i have to samples for snare, and i have them reflecting each other (-14,+14). but whats getting me is the rest of my beat. i have a CH and a shaker type sound alternating on eighth notes (down beat up beat would probably describe that better) . should i pan them the same?
 
Actually, what I do when mixing drums, and this may not work for everyone, but it's the way I do it. I start with the faders up and then I listen to the song dry, no fx. As I am listening to the song I am tweaking levels into the ballpark bringing everything into the mix just to get a feel of how everything can work together. By the time the song is over(usually) I have the levels close to where they need to be. Next I mute everything but the OH's pan those hard left and right. I create a bus for the OH's and start to add any corrective eq, gating, compression and tone shaping eq. Once I have the drums sounding the best I can get them with just the OH's I bring in the kick and season to taste, add snare, add toms/hats/cowbell/whatever until finished. I leave kick and snare centered and pan the toms according to how the relate best with the OH's usually in the 45 L or R range...meaning, if you have 3 toms, the 1st tom approx. 45 to the left, the 2nd at 0 and the floor tom 45 to the right. That is a GENERALIZATION not a PATTERN TO MIMIC. Sorry, just had to throw that in there.

After the drums are done, I add bass, then guitars, other instruments and finally vox. When I've done that I go back and fine tweak, starting with the drums so everything blends together.

That's a good suggestion, that works for me. Others may have different suggestions but it comes down to trial and error and what works for you.
 
That's a good suggestion, that works for me. Others may have different suggestions but it comes down to trial and error and what works for you.
Click to expand...

im not going to mimic you dude. lol. but thanks thats exactly what i needed. i was just having trouble getting it down to a system of doing things. which im pretty ocd about stuff so i was getting pretty frustrated.

thank you
 
Mimic away! What I meant was, there is no set practice...that one may work for your, someone else may think differently. But glad that helped. You are very welcome and good luck.

Welcome to the board.
 
Thanks for the welcome! this is quite an impressive forum.
 
keep your bass and kick centered, youve got about another 5% either way with the snare...but keeping it in the middles a good idea

keep your overheads (cymbals) within the 10 o clock to 2 o clock position..anythi g else and you are getting too unatural for our ears to accept..if you are using drum software with OH's be sure you pane the drums appropriately..but Ive heard your stuff so I dont think it pertains..just dont go wild

synths?

keep the lead in the middle..like you would a vocal..but other synths can bounce around the soundstage...pads are best left alone in the middle too but remember they are frequency fillers....unless they are the focus cut the fuck out of the middle frequencies..they are also great with a stereo imager pushing them out to the extremes after some frequency cuts

dont fall into the "W" trap of having everything at the extremes or middle..plan what you are presenting...but more importantly dont think that 1 or 2% makes much difference..give them a bit of whack when panning lol
 
Zachyboy4 said:
im trying to pan everything i guess. Im leaving most of my synths and pads pretty much centered, because thats where i think that action is. and i haven't touched the bass and i have to samples for snare, and i have them reflecting each other (-14,+14). but whats getting me is the rest of my beat. i have a CH and a shaker type sound alternating on eighth notes (down beat up beat would probably describe that better) . should i pan them the same?
Click to expand...

Put both snares up the middle, and pan the perc hard. Without hearing the track that's the best advice I can give you as it's the likeliest to work and work well.

From Zen and the Art of Mixing: "My recommendation is this: When in doubt, pan hard or don’t pan at all. Over time, you’ll figure out when to use internal panning positions. Background vocals are often a good candidate for this. Soft-panning a mono Rhodes in a predominantly guitar-driven mix can be a reasonable solution, particularly if the guitars are panned hard (as they should be). A single acoustic guitar is certainly best soft-panned in a guitar/vocal production. So there are certainly times to soft pan; it’s just that overall, hard panning is usually the better option."

Enjoy,

Mixerman
 
kcearl said:
keep your bass and kick centered, youve got about another 5% either way with the snare...but keeping it in the middles a good idea

keep your overheads (cymbals) within the 10 o clock to 2 o clock position..anythi g else and you are getting too unatural for our ears to accept..
Click to expand...

I'd say this advice is awesome were it not for that pesky little fact that 95% of popular music with organic drums have the overheads spread wide (and for good reason!). My recordings included. Sorry, but this advice has no basis on reality.

Enjoy,

Mixerman
 
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showstone said:
Actually, what I do when mixing drums, and this may not work for everyone, but it's the way I do it. I start with the faders up and then I listen to the song dry, no fx. As I am listening to the song I am tweaking levels into the ballpark bringing everything into the mix just to get a feel of how everything can work together. By the time the song is over(usually) I have the levels close to where they need to be. Next I mute everything but the OH's pan those hard left and right. I create a bus for the OH's and start to add any corrective eq, gating, compression and tone shaping eq. Once I have the drums sounding the best I can get them with just the OH's I bring in the kick and season to taste, add snare, add toms/hats/cowbell/whatever until finished. I leave kick and snare centered and pan the toms according to how the relate best with the OH's usually in the 45 L or R range...meaning, if you have 3 toms, the 1st tom approx. 45 to the left, the 2nd at 0 and the floor tom 45 to the right. That is a GENERALIZATION not a PATTERN TO MIMIC. Sorry, just had to throw that in there.
Click to expand...

This is called "top down" mixing of the drums, and it's my preferred methodology too, but it only works if the overheads are the pair of mics which contain the overall sonic picture of the drums. Most times they do, but sometimes overhead mics are placed in such a way by the recordist that they carry mostly for cymbal information and don't act well as an aggregate. There are many times that I'll use a pair of stereo mics off the kit (usually labeled "Room") as my sonic aggregate picture, in which case they're the mics used to build the drum mix, and the close mics (and the OHs are close mics in this scenario) are used to boost the missing information (usually the low end and the punch of the drums).

Enjoy,

Mixerman
 
Hmmmmm....looks like there's something good coming up this channel....
eatpopcorn.gif


<EDIT>
What happend...where did the clown dude go?! :D
 
Yeah...I like to pan my Kick & Snare spot mics relative to what my M/S overheads are giving me.
Since I don't have them up real high over the drummer, I get a nice, wide L/R spread...but that also places the Kick and Snare slightly off-center, as my centerline slices right between them. They end up in the 11:00-11:30 and 12:30-1:00 area respectively...which I like, as it doesn't jam up the center, but yet they both still sit in the "middle" of the overall mix.
 
I generally leave the main rhythm section [kik, sn, bass] panned up the center, and then everything is up for grabs... like MM - I will usually try to get the drum kit to feel like a drum kit in a room - with electronic drums / samples you can do all kind of unconventional stuff depending on the music, depending on the vibe / emotion / space you're trying to create. With a lot of electronic stuff you can really have a lot of fun getting WAY into the un-natural... like there was an "Industrial Haus" record I mixed where the H/H ended up going through an auto-panner with the outputs processed through a "phasor / flanger" with the VCO's locked [which kinda made the hats loop around your head when you were sitting at the mix position of the desk].

There are other times with more traditional music events where I'll actually keep the monitors in "one speaker mono" and do the panning in mono - not hearing the panning per se - but hearing how the panning affects the interaction of the various other sound sources within the context of the mix. Its pretty unnerving the first few times you try that [and it certainly isn't for every mix - but there are times, especially with complex arrangements that it is a quite effective technique] - but eventually it can become a technique that can show you where certain sounds are jamming up with other sounds, and be another tool in the arsenal for getting them to separate properly.

As always, the only rule is that there are no rules - that when you find your product sounds interesting and compelling then you've got it "right" - and until its interesting and demands the listener's attention - you've got more work to do.

Peace.
 
you def want to keep elements with low frequencies in them (Kick, Bass, Barry White... etc) in the middle, when the bass is only on the left ear, it can wear you thin. Also, consider putting all your most important elements in the foreground (centered), I tend to pan elements with high frequencies out to the left and right. You just gotta use your ears, also, try limiting the amount of stereo tracks in your mix, If you have a bunch of stereo tracks going on, your mix and panning can get really cluttered, try converting some to mono.

meh 2 centz:
Tyler
 
you def want to keep elements with low frequencies in them (Kick, Bass, Barry White... etc) in the middle, when the bass is only on the left ear, it can wear you thin. Also, consider putting all your most important elements in the foreground (centered), I tend to pan elements with high frequencies out to the left and right. You just gotta use your ears, also, try limiting the amount of stereo tracks in your mix, If you have a bunch of stereo tracks going on, your mix and panning can get really cluttered, try converting some to mono.

meh 2 centz:
Tyler
 
Terra said:
you def want to keep elements with low frequencies in them (Kick, Bass, Barry White... etc) in the middle, when the bass is only on the left ear, it can wear you thin.
Click to expand...

Actually - that's not quite true. When the bass is on one side instead of two sides you can end up with 3db less information than if it was on two sides... the solution of course is to turn the bass up 3db and put it on one side and you'll be fine.

The reason to put low frequency information events "up the middle" is from the good old days before CD's and MP-3's were a consideration... stereo disk cutting.

With a stereo disk you are physically cutting two grooves in an acetate master... one groove is horizontal, the other vertical. Low frequency information [waves] are large - they eat up a lot of energy [ever notice that a bass player with a 300w amp often isn't as loud as a guitar player with a 50w amp?]... so... when you're cutting the grooves into a record, you want to manage the low frequency information so you could get the most information on the disk at the loudest volume [yes, the "volume wars" existed way back then too... they just weren't quite as egregious as they are now].

If you cut the grooves too wide [too much bass on one side] then you got a shorter playing time on the record... if you cut the other groove too wide you could "bottom out" [go through to the backing - no good as there are two sides to every record]... so, in order to have reasonable disk cutting management, the low frequency information is distributed to both the lateral and vertical grooves that were being cut so you could maximize the amount of time and volume for the disk.

One of the secret mastering tricks from the day was to mono damn near everything under like 150-200Hz as it shows up in mono [acoustically] anyway. In the 80's when it became somewhat fashionable to put crap like harmonizers and chorus's on bass if the low end wasn't mono it would drive the cutterhead on the disk cutting lathe insane... causing all kinds of hideous problems and making the whole low end mono-ing thing pretty much mandatory.

I'll give you another hint - you won't find the fundamental of the "Low E" on a bass on too many vinyl records... as that note is 42.3Hz and most cutterheads had a resonant frequency pretty close to that [especially on Neumann lathes]... 45Hz was about as low as anything went back in the day.

Oft times things were done due to physical limitations of the hardware / transmission medium... there are of course other factors [like the capability of Jensen 6x9 "co-axial" car speakers - which was a major consideration as records were sold by radio play back then... and if the song didn't sound good on the radio in "Jimmy's Bitchin' Camaro" then Laura wouldn't make Jimmy buy the record and it wouldn't be a hit]... but I digress

Peace
 
Fletcher said:
Actually - that's not quite true. When the bass is on one side instead of two sides you can end up with 3db less information than if it was on two sides... the solution of course is to turn the bass up 3db and put it on one side and you'll be fine.
Click to expand...

Are you suggesting adding 3dB on top of the 3dB built into most pan controls?
 
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