Hi. Can anyone provide insight about the conventional wisdom or a personal preference regarding the panning of multiple vocal tracks? Suppose you've got two vocal tracks (a lead and a background, so the lead is a little louder) where the words, cadence, etc. are exactly the same, except the voices are at different pitches so they form a harmony... where should they be panned in the mix in relation to each other? How far apart in the panning should they be? Are there any circumstances where two vocal tracks should be panned right on top of each other?
Even if there's only a very broad rule of thumb about this, i'd be interested to hear it. Thanks.
Vocals are often such that they complement each other - the background vocal tones are to some degree separate from the lead vocal tones. This causes a vocal tone spread/harmony. But the sweetness characteristics between different vocals within the vocal section might vary either across the whole mix or at specific locations and that characteristics is something you might want to emphasize. If that is let's say a female voice in the chorus, then what you can do is to go from an R50 panning in verse 1 to an L85 panning in the chorus (or the other way around, plus attracts minus, minus attracts plus), in order to emphasize that sweetness.
The analyze phase of the mixing process is very critical in mixing. You need to listen to the original recording over and over and mark out characteristics of each sound source at certain locations. It's worth to know both the overall characteristics as well as temporary characteristics on certain locations in the song, of each sound source - both exciting, pleasant, non-exciting, non-pleasant characteristics. Vocal sweetness falls under pleasant characteristics. So do this work carefully to get a nice overview and default mix characteristics chart and make a plan accordingly, in order to make your mixes stand out. It is also worth pointing out that whatever you have in the recording is not what you are limited to, the limitation is limited. So the absence of markings on your mixing chart might be where you need to add/create certain characteristics.
Personally I always make all characteristics available on all sound sources everywhere, and use automation to add or remove these characteristics from the balanced ratio. This gives me the opportunity of not only marking the characteristics in the original, but also to mark them out from the characteristics I've created, by trying out certain characteristics in solo. This work is kind of a little tedious, but so so important. If you remove all the good stuff and don't add any good stuff either, you are kind of screwing it all up in mixing. In my case the effect of that is limited, because I will adjust the RECORDING/DRY - MIXING/MASTERING/WET ratio anyway, hence the impact is somewhat limited, but it also means I have not made the mix as great as it could be.
In other words, with vocals - just like with any other sound source - the panning depends on what characteristics you have and are able to create, both overall and at specific locations.
Overall - and this is probably one of the more valuable things you'll read on this forum - find out how the mix characteristics relate to each ear.
