Panning Anyone?

[SuperCharger]

Hi there I'm new to this board so please go easy on me

I've been doing home recording now for a while. I record all my own guitar tracks using SM57 or POD 2.0, vocals using SM57 and drums using fruity loops (until I save enough cash for a Roland V-Drum set!). I link my POD and mic to a behringer mixer which then go into my Audigy sound card.

I was wondering whats the best way to set up panning on vocals and guitars.

Up until now I've been setting it up like this.....

Main vocals: center
Backing vocals (harmony): center (but lower volume than main)

Rythme guitar: Left pan 75%
Lead guitar: Right pan 75%

Doing it like this made a great improvement over having everything dead center (when I just started out with no idea what I was doing), but after careful listening to CD's i can tell that im doing something very wrong. For a start i can often hear the rythme guitar being played twice (like 2 seperate tracks but playing basically the same thing, one panned left and the other right) which I presume gives more overall depth, and then have the lead guitar play down the center, and as for vocals.....they seem to move around alot and I cant be sure of exactly where there coming from.

Also I always check to see that the overall output balance of the mix is roughly central i.e. not louder on the right channel than left and vice versa.....Is this the right thing to do?

Hope you understand what I mean.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ds21]

There is no "right way" to do it, there are ways that are popular and sound more balanced, then there are those that when you really listen too them seem weird, but they work, look at those early Beetles recordings, or some ole live jazz recordings. If one way sounds better to you for a particular song.... if i say put this hear and that there, there will be 100 others who will say something different, the more thack the more possibilities.
You could use two different guitar tracks as you mentioned, or you could run a delay on the one track and send them LT/RT, you could use a choruse or some other sort of modulation/delay/pitchshift chain...backing vocals could be panned just a little off center to leave room for the lead...

 

[pennylink]

I guess there are about as many ways to this as there are opinions about it.

I think drums, bass and lead vocals are more often than not left center.

Rhythm guitar-wise, and especially acoustic, what works for me is to record the same part twice (or 20 times and picking the best 2 takes...), then panning one all the way left and the other all the way right. It makes for a much richer/thicker sound and helps broadening the stereo image, not to mention covering up any small mistakes or timimg issues

Besides panning the back-up vocals you can also use different or more reverb on them to push them further back, giving more separation from the lead vocal.

 

[MemoGtr]

I always check to see that the overall output balance of the mix is roughly central i.e. not louder on the right channel than left and vice versa.....Is this the right thing to do?

yes

 

[tdukex]

I usually pan the kick, bass, and lead vox right down the middle, backing vox slightly off center. Everything else is up for grabs, and balance is important. I wouldn't, for example, normally have a prominent piano part panned to the same side as a prominent lead guitar part. But ya never know.

Here's a link to a mixing primer from Bruce "Blue Bear", one of our resident pros. It contains a lot of useful information.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/bvaleria/bluebear/articles/mixing101.htm

 

[SuperCharger]

Thanks

Thanks for all the help y'all!.

I'll be sure to try out all the techniques you suggested.

 

[mixsit]

Try looking at the drum kit image, anything from full L/R spread all the way back to mono. There's quite a range in there that effects not only kit width, but to some extent 'density', and room on the soundstage for the other tracks and effects.