center vs. hard L & R

[Proveras]

-whats the diferent betwen them?
-where and when can we apply one of them?
-the drums need the stereo, but what about the other instruments?

 

[lazyboy]

Listen to some of your favorite records through headphones. You'll probably get some ideas from them. You're recording drums bass, 1 guitar and vox right? I think panning everything else dead center would be kind of boring, so mess around and see what you like. I try weight everything fairly evenly across the L-R spectrum. Listening to a recording thats uneven leads to listener fatigue pretty quickly. Ciao! -lzb

 

[Tapehead]

Some things you can play with and some you can't. Bass and lead vocals are centred. Panning the kit is usually done from the drummer's position--i.e. hi hat to the left, snare in the middle, kick in the middle, spread the toms around and the cymbals. But balance everything out. If your high hat is going ka-ching ka-ching over on the left, you maybe want a shaker or acoustic guitar over on the right. In the end you want it to balance out. Background vocals or harmonies--spread them out, with lead at the centre--unless you are doing say a quartet where each takes a lead--leave them in their position for their lead--otherwise they're jumping around on the sound stage. Piano (stereo) or keyboards are also usually recorded from the player's position, ie low keys on the left, hi on the right. The ususal exception to this is ensemble or live recording, where you put the mics back aways and record it from the audience position. But in that case your ambience is created more by room reverberation than the pan position of the instruments.

 

[Buck62]

I was listening to Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band last night through my headphones and whoa!!!... there was some seriously hard vocal panning going on there!
Lot of stuff from the sixties had that hard left/right panning, which sounds pretty cool on most tunes, as long as it's done right.
It all depends on the type of song your recording, too.
You don't want to get too radical with a country song, love song, or ballad.
Listen to some of your favorite CD's through the speakers first, and then listen to the same CD's with a good set of headphones. This will give you a better perspective on just how hard certain instruments are panned.
Sgt. Pepper is an extreme example in hard-panning. The CD "Puzzle" by Dada is an engineering masterpiece worth listening to... it's one of the best sounding CD's I've ever heard.

 

[Proveras]

Thanx for all your replys!

experimentation is the key.