old recordings and panning

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Matheon

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i've noticed a lot of old recordings have seriously terrible panning issues.

i've got this four seasons recording where they have all the music panned 100% right and just some vocals on the left channel.

a simon and garfunkle song with a crappy electric recording panned 100% right with the whole drumkit panned all the way left.

i listen to a lot of older music and i've noticed this sort of horrid panning is pretty common.. does anyone have any clue with they did this? i don't really know anything about old school recording and it drives me nuts.

did stereo jacks get invented in the 80s or did people really just think this sounded good? anyone have an idea about it?
 
Depends on exactly how old the recordings you are referring to are...
 
Early recordings from the 60's had strange pannings for a variety of reasons -- in some cases the consoles only had Left/Right/Center hard pan options, not variable like we have now. In other cases it was drugs.... and yet other cases it was mastering errors -- material that was supposed to be mastered in mono was left stereo....

Anything with strange panning after the 60s is likely to be creative tinkering -- whether good or bad (since consoles by then had full panning capability!)
 
sometimes I actually find that kinda cool...

like Al Green's "I wish you were here"

...maybe not with headphones on, though :D
 
Some Rolling Stones stuff I have heard is pretty strangely panned
 
old school

They only had 4 tracks to work with back then and like Bear stated the consoles only allowed hard right and left. It wasn't until guys like George Martin and Phil Spector figured out how to get multiple tracks through bouncing, which still gave us hard right and left pan, but were able to fit much more audio on 2'' tape. When 8 tracks came out bouncing became less of a neccessity. I wouldn't consider it horrid panning. It was the only way they could get what was considered a stereo recording back then. What is horrid was Frankie Valli's voice! Van Halen's first album has alot of guitar on one side, bass and drums on the other, vocals in the middle. With digital you can put that track anywhere in the panning spectrum which will give more control on your final mixes. You gotta cut the old producers and engineers some slack cosidering what they had to work with. Pj
 
Also, I think a lot of where things ended up laying in the stereo image was what was recorded in what order. ie. Lets say on old 4 track we have drums on 1, guitar on 2, another guitar on 3 and piano on 4. That would then be mixed and put on track 1 of second 4 track recorder. Then the recording would continue on the remaining 3 tracks. The all 4 tracks would be panned however, hard left ,center etc.. Also remember as others here have stated,in the "old days" they could only pan left, right or center. So sometimes stuff ended up where it ended up. I like it personally. Has anyone tried tried this kind of mixing today? I have. Putting drumms hard left,bass hard left ond soforth. Gives a different sound I'll tell you.
 
yeah thanks for the replys guys.. i wasn't trying to knock on the older producers. i'm so used to panning sliders and knobs it didn't even occur to me they might not have had those 25% and 50% options.

yay, now i know
 
pjh6467 said:
Van Halen's first album has alot of guitar on one side, bass and drums on the other, vocals in the middle. Pj
Click to expand...
The drums on Van Halen 1 were panned normally. kick and snare center, toms and overheads panned out. They did that album without overdubs, 1 guitarist, 1 guitar track.
 
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