Tutorials - Mixing - Panning For Gold

The art of panning instruments and sounds to create a convincing stereo image is one of the most important in mixing, yet is frequently misunderstood. So often, you hear demo tapes where the instrument placing appears to have been carried out quite arbitrarily. It's like sharing sweets: one for this side, one for that side, and one in the middle for luck. Panning is an essential part of mixing; a means of achieving balance in your music as well as creating the transparency of a stereo image that we all take for granted in commercial recordings, but which can be difficult to reproduce.

Though I'm loathe to talk about what usually happens in a mix (if we all did what 'usually happens', we'd still be playing whistles and banging hollow logs), there are a few basic ground rules which you really can't get away from. The first is that the dominant, low-frequency instruments invariably sound better placed at or around the centre of the mix.

I'm talking here about the bass drum, the bass guitar or synth and any deep percussive instruments you may be using. Pan them too far left or right and your music will sound off-centre. Fine, if that's what you're aiming at, but there are much better ways of getting creative with your pan controls.

One of the best is to set up some interesting rhythmic interplay using your different percussion sounds. Obviously, if you're using a sample loop for the drum track this may not be possible, but you could always augment it with additional percussion (such as cabasa or claves) and pan these to the left and right. Alternatively, try setting up a delay on one of your instruments and panning the dry and delayed signals to opposite sides of the mix.

Lead vocals are also placed at the centre of mix in most recordings, though this has much to do with where you'd find the singer at a live performance. There's is certainly nothing to prevent you experimenting with the positioning of the vocals, particularly where you also have backing vocals as well which can be placed in a similar position on the opposite side to the lead vocals, to balance things out

But again, hard panning left or right of any vocal parts can be difficult to live with. I should also remind you that pan controls are not static, and there's nothing to prevent you from panning instruments left and right during a recording. It's easily overdone, but in moderation it can provide a real sense of movement (quite literally) within a mix. A more subtle alternative would be to use a stereo chorus program on a effects unit which features auto-panning. This leaves the dry signal in place, but shifts the chorusing between the left and right speakers. And talking of effects brings us back to reverb which can be used to create a convincing stereo image from any mono source.

By panning outputs left and right, you can use reverb to produce a much broader, more expansive sound, even at short reverb times. On the other hand, reverb may be upsetting your stereo imaging by changing the apparent location of a specific instrument. If this does occur, try panning the reverb to exactly the same point in the stereo field as the dry signal, preferably sticking to a mono effect.

Added by - Looperman

Date - 2006-05-16 18:30:28

Viewed - 8483 times

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