Panning in Stereo or Mono..confused.

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gkowal

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Hey guys ok I am totaly confused..i read hundreds of posts about productions and stuff and i am confused now..

Currently i am using Fruityloops with many VST instruments plugins and drum samples. I am confused for overall panning thing... example i have a KICK in a mono. when i open it in Fruityloops do i still have it in the mono or stereo? i do have left and right channel jumping when i am playing it so i figure it must be stereo.. but ok it is said kick should be panned centrally and let say hihats about 20 degrees to the sides..now when i pann hihats do i open 2 hihats and pan one 20 to left and other 20 to right or do i open one and just pan it 20 to left..when i do the second wouldn`t it sound louder in left speaker then in right one? that means i moved only the volume not actually panning right? i think that in order to pann things then i open 2 hihats and pann one 20 to left and other 20 to right and now they are stereo or is it the same thing as opening one hihat and placing it 20 to left.. can somebody explain it to me???????? i`m going crazy....
 
No. You may have plenty of mono "tracks", but in your software, just like on a real mixer, they are mixed onto a stereo bus which is what you're actually listening to. Thus your "mono" kick drum when the pan knob is centered is mixed onto the main bus on both the right and left channels equally.

A stereo "track" (or sample, etc, depending on the app) is in reality just two seperate mono tracks, one for the left channel and one for the right.

Slackmaster 2000
 
ok you are saying stereo is just 2 mono tracks together..


let me draw you something ok..let say this is stereo i have seen this in some mixing book
O-kick
H- hihats

10L Center 10R
H O H

from what it looks it seems like there is 2 hihats one panned 10 degrees left from center and one 10 degrees fight from center and a kick in center.. but when i let say have one hihat played as a stereo i wouldn`t be able to pann it so left 10 degrees would play at the same volume as right 10 degrees.... it looks lik i need to have a control on both mOno hihats to do that..right? so let say when fruityloops opens up mono hihat and transforms it to stereo then i can`t achive that effect...or can i still open one more hihat and use 2 stereo hihats as monos..
 
one more..ok so stereo KICK is
2 mono centered kicks put together?

and stereo hihats panned 20 degrees from center are 2 mono hihats each panned opposite direction from center?
 
Nono. The only way something can be "centered" is if it's in stereo...unless you're just playing back on one monitor of course.

A stereo file is for all intents and purposes two mono files in one. The mono files aren't "panned", although they may have different levels. Your right monitor gets a single mono signal, as does your left....listening to these two channels at the same time with the speakers set apart produces the stereo effect! Playing the same sound exactly at the same exact thing in each speaker produces the stereo equivalent of mono.

So let's say you just have a cymbal hitting the stereo bus...if you pan it 30% left then its level on the left channel is 30% "louder" than its level on the right channel.

When you're mic'ing something in "stereo" you're typically using two microphones to capture a stereo image, which can sound wider and fuller than a single mono image. Take your ears for instance...you are hearing in stereo but each ear is independent!

Usually you won't have a stereo kick drum or hi-hat...it just doesn't make sense most of the time.

Are you sure you're not remembering that book wrong? When you talk about drum mic'ing and you see "OH" it usually means "overhead", and a typical drum mic config consists of two overhead mics which are panned apart...that might be what you're remembering from what I can tell from that diagram.

Slackmaster 2000
 
ok then i don`t understand this then.how do i create space for instruments? example when i listen to a regular cd none of the sounds weeken the others seems more like they all match together.. my songs on the other hand i have strings and guitar and piano and even if i pan them they still hit each other and one messes up the other one... you listen to orchestra cd let say u hear hundreds of instruments at the same time and you hear each one perfectly HOW do i achieve this? reverb , panning and volumes? i can`t figure this one on my own, i wish someone would show that to me... can you explain that for me? thank you.. Oh yeah i don`t record real instruments I use SYNTHS..
 
Whether you use synths or real instruments is of little concern really....same principals apply.

You're starting to get into the thick of it now. Panning is only one component in a mix, and not a very big one in the grand scheme of things since you definately want your mix to sound good mono too! I bet if you listened to a good orchestra recording in mono it would still sound really nice.

Panning gives your stage the appearance of width. Reverb and delay give your stage the appearance of depth.

Panning doesn't really give you any real space because even though your sounds are coming out different speakers, for instance, they are still mixed together in the room and in your head!

The reason that your instruments are walking all over eachother is because they are sharing similar frequency ranges! You have to use a combination of better tracking (e.g. using source sounds that sound better in the mix) and EQ/compression to get things to sit well. You need to bring out what's important in a particular sound without allowing it to walk all over what's important in another sound. You have to control the dynamics of a sound so that it doesn't fade in and out of the mix.

Basically you just asked the end-all question - "how do I mix." There's no easy answer! You can start by listening more closely to the music that you enjoy. The sound you're hearing is a combination of instruments, and that's what's really important...not any one instrument on its own. An acoustic guitar track in a particular mix might sound great, but on its own might sound weak! Just listen, you'll start hearing.

Slackmaster 2000
 
One concern about using synths. Most factory sounds have built-in effects (reverb and chorus, and such). This is because they want them to sound good when you try it in the store, but it makes these sounds a pain in the ass to mix. Try to find out if you can turn those effects off, so you can add your own. This can make for a more controlled mix.

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
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