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psychology of panning vocals

Just wondering if anyone has their vocals panned slightly to the left or right. I was in a psychology lecture today and since words are processed in the left hemisphere (i am 90% sure) u have a greater ERP/EEG (or electrical charge in the brain) in the left side. so for it to be even you would pan it to your left ear slightly cos sound from the left ear goes to the right side of the brain. Or it probably just makes no difference at all

I remember talking about this subject once. From what I remember, "even" in the sense of sound field is still centered. However, the comprehension level is higher when words are heard by the right ear as opposed to left ear, which is why most of us naturally hold a phone to the right ear. But even if the comprehension is better, it would still sound awkward in a mix to have vocals panned to one side.

Remember also that the left brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa, so left brain = right ear.

I usually pan EVERYTHING ... including vocals during a pre-mix to expand the stereo field ... while doing that Ive found that with vocals, only two panning setups that get the best pan to stereo field sound without completely screwing myself in the final mixing process ...

30 % to the left or right , with the duplicate of the same vocal/ instrument line 40-45 % to the opposite side ...

alot of times if I want a dead-on vocal track I'll duplicate and pan each one 15 % to the left and right ... Ive never had anyone from any studio around here tell me the sound Is trash ... alot of people are interested on how I get it to sound that way ...

maybe I'll screenshoot some directions on how to do this ...

quote:

Originally posted by GreenLight I usually pan EVERYTHING ... including vocals during a pre-mix to expand the stereo field ... while doing that Ive found that with vocals, only two panning setups that get the best pan to stereo field sound without completely screwing myself in the final mixing process ... 30 % to the left or right , with the duplicate of the same vocal/ instrument line 40-45 % to the opposite side ...

You do realize that is the exact same thing as panning it slightly to the "opposite" side and raising the volume?

quote:

alot of times if I want a dead-on vocal track I'll duplicate and pan each one 15 % to the left and right ... Ive never had anyone from any studio around here tell me the sound Is trash ... alot of people are interested on how I get it to sound that way ...

Again, why would you do this? You're just cancelling everything out that way and ending up with the same result as centering it and raising the volume.

The only logic I can see in this is if you're inserting a delay into one of the tracks, which would be the same as a stereo field expansion...

yes ... But I didnt mention all the VSTi's I run them through ... plus the outboard processor sitting right beside the Comp. ... after all my processing ... you can tell the diff. on each seperate stereo track ... left ... right ... together ... Unique sound takes a unique technique ... plus the pan done during pre-mix helps out seperating each single left-right stereo track on each single track as a whole ... I dunno ... you'd have to see how I do it ...

quote:

Originally posted by GreenLight yes ... But I didnt mention all the VSTi's I run them through ... plus the outboard processor sitting right beside the Comp. ... after all my processing ... you can tell the diff. on each seperate stereo track ... left ... right ... together ... Unique sound takes a unique technique ... plus the pan done during pre-mix helps out seperating each single left-right stereo track on each single track as a whole ... I dunno ... you'd have to see how I do it ...

Well sure, if you process each track differently then you are going to come up with a different sound. It would have made more sense if you'd indicated that in your original description, haha.

But yes, in that respect it's quite common to mess with stereo field. For example by inserting a delay into one of the tracks as stated before, or eq'ing them differently. You have to be careful with this though, because sometimes when it's played in mono you'll get strange artifacts or phase cancelling.

And really, this is pretty far off from the original thread topic.

Yea just really a thought. The brain isnt equal on both sides so i thought maybe music is too centralisedly panned. generally anyway. might just try it for myself by panning sounds to both ears and trying to see if there is an effect.

oh yea and by the way, the reason we do hear speech better in the left hemi is just because the electrical charge on that side is higher than the other side. And generally the higher the electrical charge the stronger we feel something so im guessing if u maximise that charge through panning or whatever its gonna have a stronger effect. (3rd year psychophysiology kicks ass!)

quote:

Originally posted by sm44 oh yea and by the way, the reason we do hear speech better in the left hemi is just because the electrical charge on that side is higher than the other side. And generally the higher the electrical charge the stronger we feel something so im guessing if u maximise that charge through panning or whatever its gonna have a stronger effect. (3rd year psychophysiology kicks ass!)

That's entirely possible. What I remember was more based on the fact that the left brain is the side which handles language (I think), so words coming in through the right ear will have better comprehension in general.

But that's a superficial explanation... what you're saying is probably the same thing but on a more applied level. I don't really know anything about brain chemistry, even basic organic chemistry was not my forte. haha.

But you know, there is a whole branch of science dedicated to this stuff, called psychoacoustics. Maybe you should look into it for graduate studies or something, if you're interested.

yea i might check that out. Psychophys goes a little bit into that but not in much great detail. like when a sound comes in, which pathways it goes to the auditory cortex, where low frequencies are distiguished and stuff. just found it very interesting

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