Mixing drums

[Flight 16]

How do you pan a drum kit...i take it snare in the middle ..same with bass drum...???

 

[jonnyfive]

Depends on how you mic'd it.

Generally, pan it as though you were looking at the kit. Snare and bass in center, hi-hat to the right, ride to the left, toms somewhere in between. Just try to keep it realistic, a drum kit isn't really as wide as some recordings make them.

 

[xfinsterx]

ive noticed that the two things that dont change about how most everyone pans theeir drums is the kick and snare. Those seem to invariably be in the middle.

But as for the rest of the kit most ppl do it a little different from one guy to the next.

I personally like to record the overheads in stereo, and pan those to hard left and right.

As for the toms i like them to be heard from the(right handed) drummers perspective.
Meaning i like the hi-tom <70 in the left speaker, the middle tom maybe>30 in the right speaker, and the low tom >60 or so in the right speaker.

The only thing ill change from time to time is the floor tom.
If the drummer is doing some like conga sounding stuff on the toms and hes using the floor tom more as the bass drum in the rythm.
At that point ill automate the floor tom more towards the center of the mix, until that part is finished, and then put it back in the panaramic panning scheme i was using.

 

[Farview]

It depends on how much you are relying on your over heads. A lot of times I will pan the toms in the center and rely on the overheads for placement. Kick and snare are always in the middle. If the drummer has 2 snares, I put the main one in the middle and pan the other one.

 

[Erik713]

Depends on how you mic'd it.

Generally, pan it as though you were looking at the kit. Snare and bass in center, hi-hat to the right, ride to the left, toms somewhere in between. Just try to keep it realistic, a drum kit isn't really as wide as some recordings make them.

You know, I've heard it this way, and I've also heard it laid out as if the listener was the drummer. Any ideas as to why the descrepency? or is it not even worth discussing?

 

[Farview]

You know, I've heard it this way, and I've also heard it laid out as if the listener was the drummer. Any ideas as to why the descrepency? or is it not even worth discussing?

There is no rule, it is just a preference. If your engineer is (or was) a drummer, he will more than likely pan it drummers perspective.

 

[xstatic]

Personally, I like the kick about 10% to the left, so I can put the bass guitar 10% to the right. This way you get a little wider image on the mix as a whole. For snare I typically put the snare top in the center and the snare botoom about 25% to the right. Toms I usually pan in the way the drummer set them up ranging from about 40% either way from center. Depending on the style of music I may even place the deepest tom back in the center to retain some extra low end through speaker coupling.

 

[mrface2112]

kick and bass being panned to the center dates "way back" (LOL) to the days where recordings were mastered onto vinyl. too much low frequency energy on one side or the other, and the stylus would cut right through the wall of the groove and ruin the master. this was accomodated for by simply putting the lows in the middle (and by using equipment that would force LFE to the middle).

i'm a drummer, and i pan drums from my perspective. hihats on the left, ride on the right, toms panned between 10 and 2, maybe just a little wider if i want the effect. any more than that and you can feel the "gaps" between the toms, and i've got 6 toms to pan.....so, keep it a little narrower and everything kinda comes in concise.

you've also gotta watch out for mono compatibility.......if your mix collapses to nothing when you listen in mono, you've got problems.


cheers,
wade

 

[ecktronic]

I wouldnt have kik or bass off centre. The recording should be of a quality that you dont need to split the two to hear them both. Eq is good for spacing instruments. So the bass guitar would be most dominant in a certain freq range and the kik drum would be most dominant in another freq range. Doesnt that stop cluttering of instruments in mixes?

 

[Farview]

The kick and bass are usually focal points for the music, They need to be panned to the center to keep the mix from being lop-sided. Also if you pan your kick to one side, you will run out of headroom on that side faster than the other. You will also loose volume when listening through a mono sub (on a system that adds the lows from both channels and pumps it out one speaker) because it's not getting the hit from both sides equally.

 

[MadAudio]

Isn't the drummer's perspective/audience perspective a British/U.S. thing? I vaguely recall an article I read years ago on this subject.

 

[Bulls Hit]

I wouldnt have kik or bass off centre. The recording should be of a quality that you dont need to split the two to hear them both. Eq is good for spacing instruments. So the bass guitar would be most dominant in a certain freq range and the kik drum would be most dominant in another freq range. Doesnt that stop cluttering of instruments in mixes?

Yeh I'd go along with this.

My kick is dominant at 100Hz, so I generally notch the bass at the same point and run them both down the middle. Seems to work well

 

[xstatic]

There is absolutely no rule that says that kick and bass have to be panned dead center. Many people don't. 10% off center really isn't too far. Not only that, with certain pan laws being a touch off of center is actually louder. I don't pan the kick and bass a little apart because one is cluttering the other, but more because it actually helps a little with getting a slightly wider stereo image. As far as the mono sub goes, I have not had a problem with it translating. If the sub was only reading audio from either the left or the right, than that would be a problem. However, most mono subs read a summed signal. Since thats the case, the level of your kick and bass decide the volume in the sub, not the panning. If panning the kick slightly differently from the bass makes a sub hit unevenly, that has nothing to do with the fact that the sub is not getting the hit evenly, but has much more to do with the bands timing between kick and bass guitar. What I recommend is to try it sometime instead of telling me that I am wrong to do that. If you don't like it, don't do it. If you do, then you just learned a new trick so congrats

As far as EQ'ing goes, yes judicious EQ'ing can really help to keep 2 similar yet different sounds from cluttering each other. The style of music, instruments used, playing ability of the musician etc... also have a lot to do with this. When dealing with drop tunings it's a whole different ball game at how you achieve certain sounds. EQ can be very helpful, but I always try volume and location (panning from left to right, or certain types of verbs even to help with a front to back image) to try and place a track before I try EQ. I don't hesitate to EQ things whether it be cuts or boosts so long as the EQ makes it sound better and works for whatever goal I am trying to accomplish. My kick drums are actually more prominent around 60-70 hz and at about 6k rather than at 100 hz (depending on the situation of course). If however I HAVE to rely on EQ to seperate things then that is generally a sign that something needs to be re-recorded in a different fashion.

 

[LRosario]

Looks like the question has probably been answered in all ways possible...

Apparently all it comes down to is preference and situation.


You wouldn't mix a jazz band the same way you'd mix a rock band. That goes for drums especially. Ultimately, whatever you can dream of to record-is the norm.