a panning theory for your debate

  • Thread starter Thread starter crosstudio
  • Start date Start date
I think littledog nailed it. For me, most acoustic instruments are to be mic'd and mixed to sound.....NATURAL. One of the things I look for is whether it sounds like a piano or a guitar. In the early day my mentor made me listen in the control room and then listen in the iso or main tracking room. Once you figure out how to make it sound likes it suppose to, then you can delve into specialty mixing.. Just my opinion of coarse. There is a hundred ways to mic everything. In my own mixes Ive tried to stray from electronic doubling, by recording guitars that are a little different, but come together only once in a while, I find it keeps they background interesting. I also try little noises and fills panned into the holes int the stereo field.
There are always exceptions to the rules and your ears should make your mixing decisions.

SoMm

P.S. Don't forget to cheack the mix in mono ;)
 
littledog said:
I know a little bit about mic'ing pianos, and I disagree strongly with that statement, unless I am misunderstanding what you mean.

If you are looking for a natural piano sound, the only time hard panning will give you that result is if the mics are in some sort of close stereo configuration, like a coincident pair, for instance. Then hard panning should sound right.

However, most of the time, if you mic the top and bottom of a piano and pan hard, you will end up with a piano that sounds 20 feet wide.
Click to expand...

You know, I just realized how silly what I wrote sounds. Here I am, thinking about an X/Y pair (coincident) and applying that to what crosstudio said. This is because in a current mix, I've got some X/Y pair recorded acoustics. Micing a piano top & bottom certainly doesn't have anything to do with X/Y. (I also don't believe crosstudio's comment "pan the mix" meant "hard panning", either)

(I did kind of indicate that I wasn't using top/bottom micing with this sentence: "If you want the acoustic guitar 25% left, you stereo mic it that way... hmmm..." so... hopefully I haven't totally lost-face :))

littledog, you don't have to just strongly disagree with what I said... you could just say it was flat out "wrong" :D
 
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