Panning Bass guitar

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Auntnastyoven

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I have been looking for an answer to this for awhile and couldnt find one so decided I needed to ask it here. I know plenty about panning regular Guitars but ive never read anything on how to pan bass guitar. Do you even pan bass guitar? If you do what are some options.

I have noticed from listening to certain bands and panning my speakers left and right that alot of times the bass is loud when i pan hard left but when i pan hard right theres almost no bass, which leaves me to believe alot of bands have there bass panned slightly to the left for some reason. Does anyone know the reason for this?
 
Well low freqs are very tricky to perceive.


Anything below (150hz? or close enough) dosn't generate a clear location to the humar ear. Which is usually why you don't pan or add reverbs to low frequency stuff.

However, not a complete law.
 
Normally bass is the foundation of a mix. If you pan it, the mix is lobsided. Without another instrument with the same girth on the other side, there would be no balance.
 
if you are doing VERY retro stuff, or are trying to pan out a jazz band as they appear to you, panning can work pretty well.

it will NEVER EVER be close to as loud as a modern Volume Wars album, but turning on the oldies channel you can really hear it cool, drums in one spaker guitars in the other

Another time you might pan a bass is when you got a really groove-ey drum part with some intricate hi hat work, and very sparse guitars. In this case, you would probably make a copy of the bass track, filter ALL the lows off, compress whats left to absolutely no life left whatsoever.

Send the unmolested full frequency bass track to the middle, and pan the filtered, compressed track opposite the hi hat
 
Auntnastyoven said:
I have been looking for an answer to this for awhile and couldnt find one so decided I needed to ask it here. I know plenty about panning regular Guitars but ive never read anything on how to pan bass guitar. Do you even pan bass guitar? If you do what are some options.

I have noticed from listening to certain bands and panning my speakers left and right that alot of times the bass is loud when i pan hard left but when i pan hard right theres almost no bass, which leaves me to believe alot of bands have there bass panned slightly to the left for some reason. Does anyone know the reason for this?
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most of the time the bass isnt panned. sounds like there's either a problem with your right speaker, or your room is cancelling out the low frequencies when you pan to the right. i'd say that what you're hearing in this case isn't what's on the original mix since its a consistent result. more likely a speaker problem, or an issue with room acoustics.
 
i always pan my bass a little to one side (i think usually the left) .. just a little bit though (mostly crusty/crunchy punk/hardcore/metal)
 
I can't tell you how YOU should pan YOUR bass, but I usually keep my bass straight down the center, along with my bass drum. Of course, other ways of panning bass work well too. The Beatles have their bass panned hard right alot of the time.
 
probably a panned bass will sound annoying when listening to it thru cans (walkman). just don't do it to be fancy - do it if it sounds better. i can't imagine it ever will but that's just my humble opinion.
 
a lot of the bass i record has a good amount of highend, i think t does help to add definition to pan it slightly to one side
 
seismetr0n said:
a lot of the bass i record has a good amount of highend, i think t does help to add definition to pan it slightly to one side
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I've gotten good results by taking a miked cabinet and a direct signal from my bass, recorded simultaneously, and panning the signals hard left and right. The perception is that the bass is coming right down the middle, but there are different timbres on each side that add ambience. Works best on fairly sparse recordings, power-trio or punk type stuff where you want huge bass.
 
seismetr0n said:
a lot of the bass i record has a good amount of highend, i think t does help to add definition to pan it slightly to one side
Click to expand...

The problem with panned bass is very often that it is the bass the 'eats' most power. Therefore a centered bass can be twice as loud. The miced DId trick doese the same: the bass frequencies are centered and it's only the harmonics that are different on both sides. That might give you a even better effect without weakening the bass level; I assume the same of the panned processed trick... But I don't know how far you pan(I also sometimes end up panning between eleven and one - just fit it to the other low end sounds) and, ymmv...

aXel
 
Lopsided Bass

Newbie dude said:
I can't tell you how YOU should pan YOUR bass, but I usually keep my bass straight down the center, along with my bass drum. Of course, other ways of panning bass work well too. The Beatles have their bass panned hard right alot of the time.
Click to expand...



i'd read that it was real common Gmartin mixed the bass and drums on a track to allow better Eq abilitys with the bass and drums, the guitars together, and vocals together etc... I think so when they did do eq it would be concentrating in a closer freq range and not effecting other ranges. like turning treble up on just the vocals and not the bass or something like that.
4-track.

but listening across all their albums it seems they did it about every way possible? I think around rubber Soul it started going everywhere, where an article with GM mentioned before RS, they had a very routine-consistent assembly line approach.

there's some bootlegs anthology type that you can hear them layering tracks from Take 1 thru take 10 or whtever. Day Tripper's a good one to hear them "build" the recording....er...of course I haven't heard this personally.. :rolleyes: amazing what just a shaker/tambourine can add to a bridge. Johns rythm almost disappears as the overdubs are added, where in the 1st take its the main piece.

Lopsided Bass...depending on what other instruments you have on the Left and Right maybe masking is going on??

if nothing else is playing but your bass track and you have abnormal differences from left to right? maybe your room, but sounds like your gear.
 
now when im talking about panned bass im talkin about very slightly to one side not hard L or R like 30 or 40 % to one side
 
Basicly, don't pan that stuff, ever. But then again, if you wanna be all freaky and innovative...
 
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