Old 04-14-2011, 08:20 AM   #1
Guncho
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For a while I've been panning things either centre or hard left and right but listening to music I find it's pretty rare that anything is hard panned left and right.

What do you guys think?

Do you hard pan anything? If so, what?
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Old 04-14-2011, 08:31 AM   #2
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This is mostly used as effect. If you want to have a "roomy" feel in your mixes, it's not a good idea to do this. In nature determination of where a signal comes from is done by the brain, evaluating on which ear the signal arrives first. You can test this if you have a signal on the left channel and delay the same signal a few ms on the right channel. Even if they are equally loud, you'll have the impression, that the signal comes from the left side. This is even true if the right channel is a bit louder.



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Old 04-14-2011, 08:33 AM   #3
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So you would not typically pan anything hard left and right?
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Old 04-14-2011, 08:39 AM   #4
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No, not typically, unless I want to have it as an effect or mix it with an appropriate fx-plugin e.g. delay or chorus. Another situation where I would do it is, if you have two instruments (say, two rhythm-guitars playing unisono). In such cases I would pan one left and the other one right.



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Old 04-14-2011, 08:41 AM   #5
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Oh sorry that's when I would pan hard left and right. Two guitars, backup vocals, etc. My point was that on modern recordings, you don't really hear anything panned hard left and right at least to my ears you don't.
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Old 04-14-2011, 08:45 AM   #6
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One reason for this might be that most instruments nowadays are recorded stereo in the first place, be it recorded directly or the use of stereophonic pre-recorded samples.



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Old 04-14-2011, 09:07 AM   #7
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ask at The Womb or Pro Sound Web forums and you'll find many pros who use hard panning all the time

some use it exclusively. left, right and center only, nothing in between
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Old 04-14-2011, 09:14 AM   #8
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Oh yes, the most important aspect of doing or not doing this is of course the style of music you do.



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Old 04-14-2011, 09:28 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Guncho View Post
Oh sorry that's when I would pan hard left and right. Two guitars, backup vocals, etc. My point was that on modern recordings, you don't really hear anything panned hard left and right at least to my ears you don't.
They might be but you might not be able to hear it, especially without headphones. On heavier music (distorted guitar), a lot of times there will be 2 rhythm guitar tracks (2 different takes), playing the same thing, each panned hard. If the execution is close enough, it's hardly noticeable without listening carefully in headphones. Then there are usually more tracks layered on top of those 2 tracks, sometimes panned hard again, sometimes not. Making the hard panned tracks even harder to distinguish.

For acoustic stuff, personally, I don't like the hard pan effect because it's much harder to duplicate an acoustic track (IMO). I usually pan at 60-80% then. But then, it always depends on the application. No rules.
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Old 04-14-2011, 01:04 PM   #10
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He's right about the heavy guitars, and don't forget the Overheads and Stereo ambiances mics, both are Hard panned even if you can't hear it

Another thing, if you hard pan something but send it to a stereo reverb, it will sound less hard panned.
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Old 04-14-2011, 04:41 PM   #11
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Isn't it true that on some old consoles they had a switch for the pan with 3 choices; L, C and R?

Listen to the Beatles, they put the entire drums and bass onto one side on many tracks.

I like to pan most of the 'band' between about 10 and 2 o'clock and then save the outer hard pans (9 and 3) for percussive instruments like tambourine, shake, maracas etc sometimes.

Good luck,

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Old 04-15-2011, 12:46 PM   #12
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Narrow field is part of the loudness wars.. Hell, some of it is almost mono lol.....

I pan everything LCR but in mastering, its common to decrease it all a bit narrower in one shot...

~Rob.
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Old 04-15-2011, 02:30 PM   #13
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Quote:
Narrow field is part of the loudness wars.. Hell, some of it is almost mono lol.....
It is kind of funny... In a sad way... The mixing engineer carefully postitions everything just-so, and then it goes to mastering and everything on both sides gets compressed to "11"... Now, there's no difference between right & left and you've got (almost) mono!

(If everything is hard-panned, compression shouldn't distroy the panning.)

Quote:
Isn't it true that on some old consoles they had a switch for the pan with 3 choices; L, C and R?

Listen to the Beatles, they put the entire drums and bass onto one side on many tracks.
I'm sure someone has the scoop on the mixer used for The Beatles, but I would guess it was done intentionally for creative purposes. Stereo was somewhat new, and heck, this was rock & roll! George Martin wasn't trying to re-create the realistic sound of a live band... He was trying to create something "interesting" in the studio...

P.S.
This article is the most interesting thing I've read about panning. It made me realize that there's no point in carefully positioning everything! If you are going to pan, use a lot of pan (even if you don't completely hard-pan).

Last edited by DVDdoug; 04-15-2011 at 03:35 PM.
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Old 04-15-2011, 02:35 PM   #14
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Mid: music, Side: FX

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Old 04-15-2011, 03:03 PM   #15
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http://thewombforums.com/showthread.php?t=10454

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Old 04-15-2011, 03:21 PM   #16
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I think (I guess?) he's referring to mono signals which it seems are rarely (sure there are exceptions) panned hard either way permanently. I say "permanently" because obviously sound FX often do go from appearing fully on one side and moving fully to the other... especially with video.

But with music and mono signals, panning something fully one way or the other sounds odd to me unless there is a counterpoint on the other side like some percussion where it kinda alternates... and even then I don't go full pan.

MMV.
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Old 04-15-2011, 03:34 PM   #17
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Quote:
But with music and mono signals, panning something fully one way or the other sounds odd to me unless there is a counterpoint on the other side
That's part of the point (and challenge) with good LCR mixing. I have a few mixes running around that way. If something goes L then a proper counterpart to provide balance needs to be at R. With suitable instrumentation and composition, I actually prefer LCR because its a cleaner mix with less track "in fighting".

It's interesting that today a mono signal is considered rare. The days of 24 tracks of mono signals panned accordingly are slipping away from us. I must say that every source being a stereo source also has its disadvantages and most times I'd be just fine with a mono signal; let me place it in the field where I want it and let me get the spacial stereo representation from the space created via room/reverb etc. I don't need a stereo flute or vocal or bass, snare, kick, hat or electric guitar for that matter; at least not the source track.


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Old 04-15-2011, 03:38 PM   #18
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I tend to use L, C, R quite a lot in my mixes. I also use a lot of stereo mic'ing and mono double tracking which works well with L, C, R mixing.
Sometimes though, I'll reign in direct mono signals to place them inside a more realistic space. A good example of that is the direct mics on the toms on my new song 'Narrow is the Way' which I posted here. I originally had the toms spread quite wide with the first rack tom and the last floor tom hard panned. This didn't really fit into the space in the mix very well so I pulled them in a little to make the field narrower and place them a little further back in the mix.

I'll often double track guitars (especially acoustic and electric rhythm parts) and backing vocals and often hard pan them. If they are tight timing wise, they don't sound unnatural hard panned.

Most of the ambience and space in my mixes comes from either stereo mic'd instruments or from delays and reverbs added to mono tracks to create reflections and space similar to mic'ing a room.

Because of the above points, even though the vast majority of the tracks in many of my mixes are L, C, R, they don't necessarily sound like hard panned tracks. I'm aiming for an overall sense of everything being in a real space and often I'll record the instruments in a real space with stereo mics to obtain that goal. It's hard to beat the realism of a real space.
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Old 04-15-2011, 05:06 PM   #19
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Quote:
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It's hard to beat the realism of a real space.
I'd go beyond that and say it's impossible. We literally spend years trying learn how to fake it better and for a good bit of popular music the "faking it" becomes the new reality.
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Old 04-15-2011, 05:53 PM   #20
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The beauty of all this is that there are no rules. If it makes your ears dance, pan your heart out.

Personally, I typically pan in regard to how I want to spatially distribute instrument tracks. I record everything in mono and use hard panning when I want to clearly delineate two opposing tracks. For example, dual guitar leads are always hard panned. Or if I have competing rhythm instruments, I'll set them hard left and right. About the only thing I leave dead center is bass, kick and lead vocal.

Have fun!

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Old 04-15-2011, 06:29 PM   #21
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Originally Posted by DBMusic View Post
The beauty of all this is that there are no rules. If it makes your ears dance, pan your heart out.
Absolutely this. If panning isn't working for your music in your studio with your style...don't worry about it. And if it is, keep doing it!

The only instruments I ever hard pan are double tracked rhythm guitars. Other than that, it's just a slight nudge left or right to give instruments room to breathe.
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Old 05-24-2011, 02:37 PM   #22
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Originally Posted by SleepyMcGee View Post
Absolutely this. If panning isn't working for your music in your studio with your style...don't worry about it. And if it is, keep doing it!

The only instruments I ever hard pan are double tracked rhythm guitars. Other than that, it's just a slight nudge left or right to give instruments room to breathe.


Glad I found this thread! I've been listening to a lot of music while on the clock at work, which means one earbud in case I get a call. I was shocked at how many of the albums on my iPod are hard panned. One guitar hard right, one guitar hard left..bass in the center...drums in the center (at least as far as I can hear)...lead vocs in the center...backups hard panned...

A few, off the top of my head:

Saves the Day - Stay What You Are
Minus The Bear - OMNI
Gatsby's American Dream - Volcano
Gatsby's American Dream - Self Titled

I love the sound of these records...Anytime I've tried hard panning, though, it just doesn't have the "umph!" of these records. Any suggestions?
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Old 05-25-2011, 12:25 AM   #23
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I've recently found out how much the Variety of Sound's Pre-Fix can do on stereo field, expecially on guitars.
http://varietyofsound.files.wordpres.../05/prefix.png

the scope control(rot knob) is a magic tool when applied to mono tracks you need to space out L and R
I've never had good results with panning hard since I've tried out this.
What I like most is the natural sense of space it can give the mix I'd never obtain with a simple hard panning.
Just a suggestion: try to set the Rot of your left guitar to -30 value and +30 for the right one. You can keep the track pan knob to center.

Pay the needed attention to any phase issue on mono check, tho
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Old 06-14-2011, 10:13 AM   #24
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DVDdoug View Post

P.S.
This article is the most interesting thing I've read about panning. It made me realize that there's no point in carefully positioning everything! If you are going to pan, use a lot of pan (even if you don't completely hard-pan).
This is an interesting article. But, I'd like to hear a general explanation of how to use delay to fill in between the three positions (LCR). Anyone want to take a stab at that?

Kyle
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Old 06-15-2011, 08:24 AM   #25
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Originally Posted by Guncho View Post
For a while I've been panning things either centre or hard left and right but listening to music I find it's pretty rare that anything is hard panned left and right.

What do you guys think?

Do you hard pan anything? If so, what?
Yea. I grew up listening to The Beatles, etc. and I always liked the weird separation they had going on. It didn't (and still doesn't) even bother me that it's not "realistic". I also like the way it makes my songs sound.
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