Panning?

[Smidgelton]

There doesn't seem to be much discussion on this. Panning seems like it might not be a very difficult process, but it does play a huge part it the overall sound of a recording. As a listener, this is something I take a lot of notice to it whether it be a brief vocal, layer of guitar/synth, or a ginormous drum fill. How much time and thought is put into panning? How do you decide how you are going to use it in a recording?

[Ronan Chris Murphy]

90% of the tracks in my mixes are hard left right or center.

[brandondrury]

90% of the tracks in my mixes are hard left right or center.

Terry Manning (who's about as big of engineer as it gets) said the same exact thing. He called the area in between center and hard left/right "no man's land".

This can get difficult to do at times. For example, a rock band with one guitar player who refuses to double causes the mix to sound one sided if he's hard panned, but fights the vocal too much if it's center panned. I know some guys toss a reverb on the other side hard panned to balance out a single panned guitar, but then you have to be very careful with predelay.

I never hard pan drums. I hate the sound of toms coming out of one speaker, personally. I have done mono drums many times and I tend to like that when it fits the song/project.

Brandon

[dach]

Chris, Brandon or anyone....

good subject.....!

I do both center/LR and all over the place depending on what it is but one thing has always intrigued me... When listening to a number of Steve Vai albums and cuts, I hear cuts that have little to NO center information just hard L/R panning... and they sound magnificent... especially when summed to mono... I know the 3000 played a big roll in tracking but does anyone have any info or tips on how this was achieved?

I know they used tons of delays, pitch shifts and verb layers not to mention the sounds are great already but I've never been able to pull it off... any help is appreciated...

[brandondrury]

You've got me! In my experience, the wider you go the more problems you have in mono, but I don't give a damn what something sounds like in mono. I can't remember the last time I head anything in mono.

Brandon

[Ronan Chris Murphy]

This can get difficult to do at times.? For example, a rock band with one guitar player who refuses to double causes the mix to sound one sided if he's hard panned, but fights the vocal too much if it's center panned.? I know some guys toss a reverb on the other side hard panned to balance out a single panned guitar, but then you have to be very careful with predelay.

Lots of albums have one guitar hard panned. The last U2 album has one guitar hard panned for most of the album.

[brandondrury]

What do they do with the bass in this situation?

Are they leaving it center? I've done a hardcore punk project where I panned the guitar on one side and the bass on the other.

Brandon

[Smidgelton]

That sounds like a Ramones album right there.

[dach]

well, I actually like to mix in mono BUT the only reason I checked the VAI stuff in mono was because I could not discern any center channel information... which was sort of a mind blower...

[brandondrury]

I'm curious about the drums in the Via record. Were they clearly on one side?

Brandon

[dach]

toms were split between L/R everything else including bass was run through some stereo processing and hard panned... some were eq'd splitting frequencies by speaker, etc...

I'll dig up the discs and find which cut's I'm referring to...