panning
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Posted on Aug 28, 2007 06:56 am
greendate
Joe
Member Since: Jul 27, 2007
hi guys
is there a general rule of thumb for panning
i am in a 3 peice/ 4 peice band
some songs are 3 peice and some songs are 4 peice
2 guitars at most drums and bass
can any one help with this
e.g lets say im doing a 3 peice song 1 guitar drums and bass
were would all the instruments/vocals need to be left - right
now lets say im doing a 4 peice song 2 guitars drums bass were would all the instruments/voacals need to be left to right
and finally were would be the best place to put solos and vocals
thanks loads
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Kaos62Kaos is only a form of insanityMember
Since: Feb 03, 2005
Aug 28, 2007 07:24 am to be honest it is a very personal thing and you will get a whole host of different answers.
Some people will pan hard some very little. It will also depend on the music and context as well as the need to accentuate certain musical phrases etc....
Listen to comparable music to yours and see where the instruments are placed.
As a basic rule snare and kick are generally straight down the middle together with main vocals, guitars and bass are just off centre and perhaps the overheads for the kit are pushed a little further.(imagine looking at the band and seeing where the instruments are placed for a live gig)
You can really accentuate solos by pushing them further to one side or the other, and the same applies for backing vocals.
Imagine everything in a sonic sphere and visualise the music and individual instruments
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Aug 28, 2007 07:34 am I agree with what kaos says.
But to add, I just tracked some acoustic stuff, and tracked mic track, and DI track on most stuff. I ended up panning stuff around pretty loose:
guitar mic : 45% right, certain sonic tweaks.
guitar DI : 30%left, with slightly different tweaks.
Mandolin mic : 52% left, with certain tweaks,
Mandolin DI : 40% right, with certain different tweaks.
This put most of each instrument in it's own space in the field (pretty much) without making it only on one side.
Stuff like that. I left the bass alone, down the middle. A few backing vocals I did similar to the instruments, with maybe a little different effects on each part.
Aug 28, 2007 07:40 am hi guys, thanks for that
well we are a green day tribute band, so that will give u some idea of what sound im after.
www.greendate.co.uk
we have recorded in 2 studios in the past and have not been happy with the final cut, mainly down to running out of time. so we hav epurchased like 2 grans worth of kit, and have started recording our own album, at the moment we only have the drums down, bass next, then guitars then vocals
Aug 28, 2007 07:41 am Deleted By Noize2u
Aug 28, 2007 02:59 pm If you listen to different stuff out there, there's all kinds of interesting ways to use panning to create a different composition... Beatles records are great examples of interesting uses... also the Life and Times' "Muscle Cars" is a song that has some great panning that I would never think to do, but sounds super interesting.
In general, I do alot of stuff like pjk to make the mix sound wide and full without isolating instruments to one side. Of course, its worth mentioning that anytime you're panning different sources of the same instrument (especially multiple mics), you create possibilities for phase cancellation. As you're mixing stuff like this a good rule of thumb is to switch back and forth from stereo to mono every now and then and listen for any major frequency dropouts... if you hear anything weird, you have phase issues. Most DAW's will have an invert phase plugin that you can play around with or you can use something like the Waves' PAZ analyzer to tweak your panning/frequency balance.
