Do you pan your bass?

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pasnu

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Do you guys pan your bass? If you do to witch side and by how much?
 
Nope. I do not like panning bass at all (with the exception of doing it for effect, then switching back to center).
 
Did an attempt to paint a quartet's live acoustic bass stagescape once. Put most of the lows center but panned and set the upper cues a little right.
Yes it worked. Haven't used it very often though.
 
pasnu said:
Do you guys pan your bass? If you do to witch side and by how much?
Click to expand...

The wicked witch is to the west (left) and the good witch is on the right,i think.

..and don't forget to sparingly throw in a couple of those flying monkeys for some cool effect.
 
I'll stick it a notch or two either side, sometimes... depends what else is going on..
 
Thumper pan~pan

My bass playing is rumoured to be so bad, it regularly gets panned !
 
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I think it depends on what type of music you are doing. I do a lot of Trip Hop stuff, where it needs to sound powerful. If I were to pan my bass to one speaker, it would weaken my mix. However, I've heard some great mixes in jazz and other softer styles where the bass was panned to the left the whole mix, sounded great. use your ears!

Tyler
 
I generally dont pan the bass. But I have used various effects to expand it like a chorus.
 
But seriously, folks !

When I listen to some of the recordings from the 60s with the bass panned to one side, it doesn't sound odd to me. But I'd like to see the song and situation that would make me pan the bass left or right. Actually, I did do it on one song, but the bass was played very unconventionally, just harmonics as sound effects {the song was called "Mummy dust, Daddy bells" which tells you all you need to know, really}. As my memory jogs, I did it on part of the intro of another song many moons ago, but again, the bass was unconventional ~ I was just running a cup up and down the strings and using it for effect and in the intro, all the noises and unusual happenings were being panned randomly all over the spectrum. The bass didn't even sound like a bass, more like a crashing plane.
I find that if I put the bass to one side, it almost hurts the ear on that side and for some reason, it feels very unbalanced. I'm not really one for observing rules, but while I'll experiment with most things at least once, I can see why the very first multitrack manual I had (for the Fostex X~15) contained the immortal phrase "except for the accepted practice of putting bass guitar and lead vocals in the centre........" when explaining that mixing was more art than science. And while I'm not a stickler for vocals necesarilly dead centre, the only thing for me that goes there without negotiation, at least at the moment is the bass (or double bass).
I could really have answered the question with a simple 'no'. But I wanted a vibrant stereo spectrum with nothing up the middle......
 
Generally, I think to pan the bass is a pain in the ass.
 
I always pan bass a few clicks off-center...usually to the right, at about 12:30.
Besides bass, I also split/pan my kick and snare...about 11:00 (kick) and 1:00 snare, and I rarely have two elements occupying the same position...more like never.
I like to leave that small space in the center open for my lead elements...vocals, guitar, etc.

Panning bass a littler off-center will not be really noticeable as "panned", because low-end frequencies tend to sound mono anyway (2.1 or 5.1 setups use one sub, usually placed off to one side)...and since I pan bass to the right, it only makes sense to put the kick a little to the left to balance things out. Also, with the Snare a little off-center, when you have big hits and lead vocal/guitar notes all on the same beat, you don't get as much peak energy build-up in one spot.
Plus...I don't like when I hear a mix with bass, kick, snare, vocal, lead, all in the center...and then just two rhythm guitars or keys panned off to the sides. It sounds strange to me, and at that point you might as well just mix in mono.
I prefer to fan out all the elements, since there is 180° of L/R image that can be used, so why jam it all up the middle?
 
Cheers for that miroslav -some useful tips I will experiment with in my next session
 
I haven't come across a situation where I felt i needed to pan the bass. I like what miroslav said though, so i might tinker around with those ideas in the future.
 
I pan the bass about 5% off-center. It's not enough to notice, and it seems to be enough to keep it from clashing with the kick and snare.
 
Hey Gt, you're the only person I know who uses curly brackets in general typing.... please explain?
 
I usually don't pan the bass for more "traditional" recordings (aka most mainstream stuff). If you're going for a more spatial kind of experience and the instrumentation isn't to high in terms of numbers, then by all means, have at it. In most stereo jazz recordings I have that are from the 60's and 70's the bass is panned about 80% of the time. Just throwin' that out there.
 
I often pan the bass slightly to one side, and the kick drum to the other. I mean like 11:00 and 1:00. It helps separate them, since they are often in the same frequency range.
 
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