Kick should be mono. A lot of people will say that percussion should be mono to but I normally just have them all in stereo as that's how they come.

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main theme (for example melody, pad) should be centerd also imo.

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Originally posted by Octanesyco Greetings. My name is Casey. You can call me Moose. -Moose

Don't mistake mono/stereo for panning. Kick can be stereo (I even say it should be) but IMO bass MUST have stereo data. A mono bassline could be great for some kind of electro or similar, but for trance, basses should be full of stereo: chorus, phasers, delays, reverbs... Don't put a naked bass in the middle, dress it with some fx.

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What purpose would it serve to have a kick in mono only??

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I have my snars and voclas in mono, lol

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hhhmmm... mixed opinions
Apparently its a choice of taste.

quote:

Posted by: Digital Aura What purpose would it serve to have a kick in mono only??

Good question.

What I thought was that everything stereo would over crowd the mix or make it sound muddy or something like that. I've read some tutorials and never seen this topic. Guess there's no rule then...???

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when i started producing trance, I used a sample library with mono kicks, snares, hh. When I changed it for a stereo drums library my rhythms got more life, better sounding. Kicks cant be panned but it can be mixed with a litte room reverb (to make it sound less dry but more pumpy and warm).

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quote:

Originally posted by Digital Aura What purpose would it serve to have a kick in mono only??

Because it must be in the middle of the stereo picture (ie. panned center). All of my kicks are mono. If you were to make a vynil out of a track with panned kick, you will be very surprised when playing that piece of vynil on a party ....

when cutting a vinyl, if you have out of phase stuff going on in the bass (generally under approximately 200 hz) the grooves are going to be cut in such a way that when played back, the needle will literally jump out of the groove and this is a BAD thing.

soo... the whole thing about mono bass doesnt mean your actually bass patch should be totally mono.. it just means when you are making something and it is going to be considered to but pressed to vinyl, great care should be taken to make sure the sub bass frequencies are not going out of phase (meaning that they should stick very much to being MONO, but they can be a little bit stereo)...

what this means is... for your bass sound, the higher frequencies can have all sorts of stereo effects on them (chorus, reverb, delay, etc.), you just have to keep a check on those sub frequencies .

there are useful phase analysis tools that will show you a graph of the phase vs. frequency and analyzing the audio with a tool such as that is a good way to see if you have too much out of phase sub bass

hope that helps,
-rob

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there's a plugin, dynason, that spread the phase of low-freqs to adapt it for vinyls. it don't make a great difference in sound.

But you are forgetting a very important thing about panning. Kicks shouldnt be panned because:
1. Ear is little sensitive to low-freq phase differences so the only way to pan sounds is by level differences. If you do that, and use a compressor, you'll notice that the whole stereo image will be jumping everytime kick sounds.
2. Very Bass freqs (kick, not the bass) should be only present at the beat moment or concrete instants, leaving the rest of the time sounding mid-hi freqs. A constant subbass freq (like kick with delays or dense reverb) can muddy the mix.

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SHK:\>my_music
my_latest_tune = shockwavedj://epoxy

id always say pan ya percussion around a bit

and if ya can, get 2 909 hats that sound slightly different and pan one to the left and one to the right and it kinda makes a chorus effect on it