How should I set up panning for...

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Gavin

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lead vocal, guitar, drums and bass guitar.

I have a 4 track and have read somewhere that it is important to pan certain instruments to left and right to get better seperation and thus better sound recording quality.

Anyone know how I should set the panning up? We want to record live one shot. We are not multi tracking.

Thanks,
Gavin
 
There are alot of different ways, im not sure how many actual options you have with the 4 track. I like drums, bass, main vocal in the center. 2 guitars one left and one right about at 9 and 3 o'clock. Others like it differently. experiment and see what you think sounds good.
 
great thanks for the info.

I just have 1 guitar, 1 bass, 1 vocal and drums so I guess I should just leave everything centered and maybe when I master the track just add some chorus to give it some seperation? Also maybe some reverb to give the track some depth?
 
Experiment with the mix and see what sounds good. Use those transducers on the side of your head.
 
i'm not understanding something here gavin,

are you recording the entire band (drums, bass, guitar, vocal) to one stereo track (ie... channels 1&2 on your 4-track) by using an external mixer.

or

are you recording each individual instrument to a separate track then mixing/mastering that to a stereo track on a separate machine?
 
I'm selecting tracks 1&2 and recording in real time. My 4 track doesn't record 4 tracks at once but by selecting bus 1&2 I am able to record all tracks at once. I think it's called bleeding.
 
You will probably want to put everything center then use a touch of reverb or delay on guitars and vocals to widen things up a bit.
 
I have just one mic hanging from the ceiling and it's about 1ft from the snare in the center of the kit. I know I need to get some drum mics and do it right. I would run mics through a mixer then into my 4track but I will have to save up for that.
 
If you are recording to a 4-track tape machine then I think I know what you are saying. Since your machine only records two tracks at one time you have to set the pan of each input track to a left or right recording bus.
If so, then just set the pan duing recording then change it back when you do playback. That way it will record to the correct bus but playback in stereo.
 
I think the immediately preceding post missed the spec that:

We want to record live one shot. We are not multi tracking.
Click to expand...


The original poster is, as he says, recording straight to two-track. In this application, he could just as well be using a stereo mixdown deck. What he's doing is recording "left" onto track 1 and "right" onto track 2.

Panning, ultimately, is really an "artistic" decision. There's no right or wrong. If this were a cookbook, it would say "pan to taste." Personally, I would tend to pan these things, at least somewhat. If you've only got one drum mic, I'd probably try panning it to one side. Probably no farther than "3 o'clock" or "9 o'clock," though. Maybe try the guitar the other way. Whatever works. I'd probably wind up with the lead vocal pretty close to the middle, though.

This isn't a wildly unusualy way to record: I think it used to be somewhat common in the days when four was considered a lot of tracks. One thing you might consider is recording just the backing stuff (no vocal) live, in stereo to track 1 and 2. Then overdub vocals onto tracks 3 and 4. Or you could dub vocals onto track 3 and another guitar part onto 4. Or not. Whatever. When you mix down, you pan track 1 (band, left) hard left, track 2 (band, right) hard right, and 3 and 4 "to taste."

One note: if you think you might want everything dead center in the middle, you can always do that when you play back. You can eliminate (or narrow) the panning decisions you made when you recorded the band live to two tracks -- at mixdown, you just bring tracks 1 and 2 in from hard left and hard right.
 
Thanks for the info.

I've decided now to the only way I will be able to get a good quality demo would be to record 1 track at a time.

The other night we recorded with nr on but got way to much clipping stuff going on. I think the input levels were too high. When I cut nr of there was no clipping.

I think I need to take my time and record one track at a time.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Gavin
 
Gavin said:
I think I need to take my time and record one track at a time.
Click to expand...

There's a lot to be said for this approach, particularly if you're just starting out. Certainly, there are "recordists" who can sit down at a mixer and record a band live to two tracks and wind up with a decent sounding mix. But they're generally people who've spent a lot of time sitting at mixers, and can instantly and almost instinctively perceive how they need to adjust the mix in real time. It helps to be sitting in an isolated control room with good monitors.

What you lose is the vibe of having the whole band record at once. But, if you can't record at least 4 tracks (or 8, or 16) at once, you may just have to lose that vibe.

I wonder, with your sort of amateurs-fooling-around-recording-in-the-basement-with-a-Portastudio bands, whether part of the reason people don't want to record part-by-part is because then half the band is afraid they'll become superfluous? I mean, what do you do when the guy who's the best singer is also the best guitar player and the best bassist? It happens.

Just a thought.
 
sjjohnston said:
There's a lot to be said for this approach, particularly if you're just starting out. Certainly, there are "recordists" who can sit down at a mixer and record a band live to two tracks and wind up with a decent sounding mix. But they're generally people who've spent a lot of time sitting at mixers, and can instantly and almost instinctively perceive how they need to adjust the mix in real time. It helps to be sitting in an isolated control room with good monitors.

What you lose is the vibe of having the whole band record at once. But, if you can't record at least 4 tracks (or 8, or 16) at once, you may just have to lose that vibe.

I wonder, with your sort of amateurs-fooling-around-recording-in-the-basement-with-a-Portastudio bands, whether part of the reason people don't want to record part-by-part is because then half the band is afraid they'll become superfluous? I mean, what do you do when the guy who's the best singer is also the best guitar player and the best bassist? It happens.

Just a thought.
Click to expand...

It's just a drummer and me right now. I have a song-writing partner who writes the lyrics and I write the music but he can't play an instrument. In fact I had to teach my drummer how to play the drums.

I like the live sound that's one of the reasons we like to record one shot. Also since we are writing new material ridiculously fast we needed to record very fast. Last Saturday we wrote 6 songs in 3 hours. Only 4 were any good and only 3 of the 4 fitted our style.

But recording fast like this causes us to end up with bad quality recordings.

We never have the time to practice what we wrote cause we are always too busy writing new material.

We only practice once a week so maybe we will need to find another day or so to practice. We use acoustic drums and need to select band practice times carefully as I rent and I don’t want to get kicked out.
 
you mentioned that you've got 1 mic centered in front of the kit is the other mic' on the bass amp, or are you using a direct box for the bass?

since you'll have the drums in track 1 (panned hard left for recording) and bass DI'd into track 2 (panned hard right for recording), you and the drummer can play at the same time and that will keep some of the 'vibe' you may be looking for.

then you can record the guitar part on track 3 and the vocal on track 4 independently.

i thought about it somemore, and i'd pan the vocals to the right (3'oclock), the kick and bass down the center, and the guitar to the left (9 o'clock).
 
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