How to pan two mics

[FloydLongwell]

I'm recording one classical guitar with two Shure SM81's. It will get mixed down to one track. Make sense? How should I pan them?

I will record a flute to mix in. Should I also use two mics for the flute? Pan?

So the final product will be one guitar and one flute somehow mixed together. Any suggestion how to pan / mix / track this?

 

[ecc83]

Can I assume you are using two mics on the guitar in the (now "classic") configuration of one pointed at about the neck/body join and one pointed at the lower bout? Then you will balanced the two tracks to get the sound mix quality you desire and render to mono?

The same idea does not apply to a flute because it is so much smaller than a guitar and thus is a virtual "point source" of sound (unless you attached contact mics!) So now you have a mono guitar track and a mono flute track...convention would suggest you pan them slightly left and right of centre? That assumes you are trying to create a stereo* "picture" of a musical event that hasn't actually happened in reality.

* "proper" stereo would be a co-incident pair of directional mics or a spaced pair of omnis...or! Any of an infinite number of ideas for stereo mic setup! That of course would also imply guitar and flute are playing at the same time and you are in a very nice sounding room.

Dave.

 

[Papanate]

I'm recording one classical guitar with two Shure SM81's. It will get mixed down to one track. Make sense? How should I pan them?

I will record a flute to mix in. Should I also use two mics for the flute? Pan?

So the final product will be one guitar and one flute somehow mixed together. Any suggestion how to pan / mix / track this?

You are using a Korg right? I would record the guitar using a Coincident Pair configuration - not to close to sound hole - Stereo recording- For the Flute I would use XY configuration stereo recording - regarding mixing - it is always a choice on how you want it to sound - so one way would be to have the guitar panned left and right - maybe 10 and 2 - and have the Flute down the center - another would be to favor the guitar on the left and the flute favor the right - blending it - There is the point and listen method to micing the guitar and flute as well - put the SM81s around the guitar and flute and listen - or record and listen - this method is better for untreated rooms as you can cancel or minimize the sound you don’t want getting into the recording.

Are you having any effects? Chamber or Plate sort of thing? - if you do you choose to the same for both instruments and listen carefully on how much to bring in - using the Pre Delay judicially to get the instruments forward of the reverb.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

when you say "one track" do you mean played back together as a single performance, or do you mean you want two tracks, but ultimately you're going to want them in mono?

There's, um, a lot of ways to do this, but if I wanted one performance of acoustic guitar, and one performance of flute, and the flute was playing the melody while the guitar was an accompaniment, I'd probably do some sort of stereo mic technique on the acoustic (X/Y array is good, I also like one mic at the fret the neck meets the body off and just far enough back to not get in the way, and another pointed at the body behind the bridge, maybe at ear level pointing down, maybe pointing dead on, to capture a little more depth and a little more of the "strum" or in your case "pluck" sound of the strings, popsitioned to taste, but also test to make sure if you collapse to mono it still sounds ok). then, pan one side hard left, one side hard right, record the flute with a single mic, and pan it dpwn the center. It won't be maybe the widest stereo spectrum you'll ever hear, but there WILL be some width to the mix, and if you're careful with mic positioning it should sound pretty full.