To pan or not to pan

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jaster
  • Start date Start date
SouthSIDE Glen said:
By not following any specific recipes. Producing music should be a creative art, not an assembly-line fabrication. Imagine the song in your head, listening particularly to the arrangement and whatever the main elements and hooks are. Start imagining how panning will make it sound the most interesting or will provide the panning "picture" you are forming in your head.

G.
Click to expand...


I really want to hear some of your mixes because I love the idea of just panning and placing things in certain spots for the sake of being interesting. I have tried this and I always fail, but I'd like to get better at it because I think it adds another texture to the music, like the, (dare I say it?), Beatles albums. I love the way some of those are mixed. I am not a huge Beatles fan but when I really started getting into recording I started to notice how amazing some of their records are from a mixing standpoint. I have been listening to them a lot more with a careful ear. It is a major element of their music.
 
chewbacaface said:
I love the idea of just panning and placing things in certain spots for the sake of being interesting. I have tried this and I always fail, but I'd like to get better at it because I think it adds another texture to the music, like the, (dare I say it?), Beatles albums. I love the way some of those are mixed. I am not a huge Beatles fan but when I really started getting into recording I started to notice how amazing some of their records are from a mixing standpoint. I have been listening to them a lot more with a careful ear. It is a major element of their music.
Click to expand...

For any album that wasn't mono, The primary panning for the Beatles was LRC.

Three places (hard left , center, hard right). Many mixers swear by that technique..some don't.
 
Oh boy... not another panning thread! Although, in all fairness the OP was several months ago. Who resurrected it anyway? :mad:
 
Waltz Mastering said:
For any album that wasn't mono, The primary panning for the Beatles was LRC.

Three places (hard left , center, hard right). Many mixers swear by that technique..some don't.
Click to expand...

Even with just the three areas though, they made some odd choices on where to pan things. Some of them are not where you would expect the instrument to come from and it may happen for the entire song or for just a single part... at any rate, it adds a lot in my opinion.
 
chewbacaface said:
Even with just the three areas though, they made some odd choices on where to pan things. Some of them are not where you would expect the instrument to come from and it may happen for the entire song or for just a single part... at any rate, it adds a lot in my opinion.
Click to expand...
A lot of all that ha fairly mundane explanations.

First a lot of the early LRC mixing (and not just for the Mopheads) was not so much choice as it was technical limitation; some of the old mix consoles did not have pan potentiometers, they only had three-position pan switches.

Second, much of what we now think of as "weird" panning choices were made back then to accentuate the newfangled binaural experience. "Stereophonic" records (though technically, LRC is not really creating a stereophonic image) were rather a novelty for much of the public back then, and exaggerated use of the technology to show it off was in vogue for many.

G.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top