Professional Panning Advice

[shultzee13]

There are alot of different opinions when it comes to panning. I would like to know the opinion of the duc when it comes to mixing a praise and worship song that is uptempo and consist of:

Keyboards
Acoustic Guitar
Drums
Electric Guitar (Rhythm & Lead)
Bass
Lead Vocals
Backing Vocals
Drum Loop

Any advice would be really appreciated!

[albee1952]

As always, the rules are there to be broken, so here's my 2 cents.

Keyboards-assuming a stereo track, sometimes I pan hard L&R and other times I will pull one side in(which moves the keyboard off center).

Acoustic Guitar-I prefer to double track and spread to 10 and 2 o'clock

Drums-kick and snare center, hat slightly off right, toms and overs panned as if I am looking at the kit from the audience(don't forget that a lefty drummer would have it all reversed).

Electric Guitar (Rhythm & Lead)-rhythm gets doubled and spread(maybe 9 and 3 o'clock). Leads go near center and maybe get a mono verb/delay panned opposite

Bass-center
Lead Vocals-center
Backing Vocals-all parts doubled and spread. 10/2, 9/3 and even hard panned if I have several parts going
Drum Loop-center or hard panned
That's my usual, but I will make changes. Some of the centered bass and kick are holdovers from the vinyl days where low frequency info had to be centered or the needle would jump out of the groove. Panning can be used to recreate the sound field of a live band, or whatever else you can imagine. Often, I just close my eyes and try to picture the players and pan each where they would be on stage. Give a good listen to some of your favorite music and see what they did.

[shultzee13]

Thanks Albee. I really appreciate your input! Happy 4th!

[stonehenge]

albee's right on (as usual), especially the 'place the parts like a live band' deal. also, lots of stuff affects where something sits in the mix. something off to the side could be more prominent due to its volume or frequency content, and something in the middle could seem more distant due to reverb.

i tend to make everything as big as possible while i'm working, then when i put it all together it's like a tornado (and not in a good way). so i'm trying more and more to approach mixing like painting (not that i know how to paint, but...) where you might have a main subject and then 'supporting' stuff around it. you don't want an audio version of where's waldo, unless that's what you're aiming for!

my advice would be to grab 2 or 3 'commercial' songs that have mixes you like and study them. pick out all the parts and then map them out on paper using horizontal for panning and vertical for volume. then do the reverse with your tracks - draw them out then try to recreate your 'map'.

[Dorian Green]

Heyo!
It's really a question of taste! Apart from the kick, the bass and the lead vocal (most of the time in the center, by the way we need to sort out the low end battle between the kick and the bass!)
Anyway, all the panning recipe describe upper is also usualy what I do.But a panning setting doesn't have to be the same all song long.You can play with it to give an image dynamic.For example when you want a kind of dialogue between the two guitars responding each others.
If you can't record another acoustic guitar (doubling) you can just duplicate the track, hard panning left and right and add a Time Adjuster on one of them depending in wich way you wanna hear the guitar stereo move in the stereo field.You delay should sit around 20 ms, higher will sound weird.
Hope it helps.

[albee1952]

Dorian raised some good points that I forgot about. If I have, say a guitar track that happens to take a solo in a song, I will often automate the pan to bring more center for the solo and then slide it back where it was. I have done the duplicate trick on acoustics and slip one track later by 1200-1600 samples(Alt-H). For that scenario, I will usually do some radically different EQ on the duplicate track. Remember, these are suggestions only, so feel free to experiment. And take a listen to some of the early stereo records from bands like the Beatles to hear some wacky panning.(wacky didn't seem to hurt their record sales......)

[wwittman]

after telling me how to pan things, can you tell me how loud to make each thing?

[jtauban]

great advice so far! That should get you going...
a few more ideas:
Find the star (usually the lead singer, but could be a really inspired/inspiring/original/emotional performance on another instrument) and let it proudly stand alone in the center. balance the energy around it.
Use symetry (makes the listener feel good and secure) /assymetry (grab and focus the listener's attention) in a dynamic way through the song.
A lot of it has to do with the song and the arrangement. In the best mixes, every mixing decision is there for a reason. Your choices of pan can help a song blossom. (try that: let the song start with a relatively narrow sound field, everything panned closed to center, then bring widely panned stuff for your chorus, then back to quasi-mono, etc...)
Also remember to experiment with panning reverbs and other effects as well.

But the key was mentionned before: listen, analyse, dissect, study mixes. Listen on your monitors, on headphones, take notes, listen to the right/left channel only, til you visualise those mix... then practice these technics. we never stop learning, our mixes just get better!
have fun
julien

[Fastermouse]

Read this all the way through. If you don't want to see the other posters, then go to the last page and download the pdf.

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.p...&highlight=box

It is genius.

For my part, and I know this sounds crazy, but I think of my desk as a shadow box. And each sound has a space suspended in the box. It has a color, a size, a shape, a height, and a depth. Some are large, some are small and some stand alone, and some peek out from around from behind others. Then I go listen to the mix in my car and see if it moves around.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by wwittman

after telling me how to pan things, can you tell me how loud to make each thing?

This is what separates the mixers from the wannabee's. Trying to explain it is kind of like painting by numbers, or teaching taste. The best way really is to pick some commercial CD's that you really like, and study them(and try to recreate the "mix" on them).