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How far can you go with panning?
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| Massive84 |
So i have been wondering.
Most of us now , panning low frequencies is a bad idea, especially if your getting it on vinyl.
However panning fx sounds and maybe leads,strings etc or the perc.
How far can you go with panning there? yes of cource there are no rulez, but is it like stupid if you pan some wind effect fully left for example?
Thanks in advance :) |
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| thecYrus |
until the slider stops left or right ;)
no, seriously i pan some fx to the full left or right, the same with some drums.. |
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| Rob |
I say this is going TOO far, and to me, sounds annoying:
Schulz/Deepsky
Thoughts? The lead HH is panned totally to the left:nervous:
(dunno if it's post mixed down version or what? Actually, disregard this entire post) :haha: |
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| Dj Thy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Massive84
So i have been wondering.
Most of us now , panning low frequencies is a bad idea, especially if your getting it on vinyl.
However panning fx sounds and maybe leads,strings etc or the perc.
How far can you go with panning there? yes of cource there are no rulez, but is it like stupid if you pan some wind effect fully left for example?
Thanks in advance :) |
You can go as far as it sounds good. Only experience and a little bit of taste will tell. What you have to pay attention though is the long term balance. If you pan something away, you should always have something in roughly the same frequency range as counterweight. For example, it's bad to pan a low/med sound hard left, and a very high frequency sound hard right. That will create a very weird (and unnatural) effect. Your overal balance should still stay in the middle. So always make sure you have a sound of the same kind to put on the other side. I see lots of people panning hard left/right all the time. Don't do that, use all the space you can to create an interesting stereo field.
For drums there are different views.
If you look at pop/rock music (with a real drumkit) there are people that try to create the feeling of the listener in a concert (so you have to know how a drumkit is composed, so you can pan accordingly).
Other engineers want to pan the drumkit as the listener was sitting on the drummers chair (the opposite of the first method).
The purists pan according to the real drum position (so, the snare won't be in the middle, if you look at a drumkit it's not exactly in the middle either), but mainstream music has always kept the snare dead centre for the last twenty years.
For electronic music, you are a little bit more free, as you're not really bound to reality (with an accoustic drumkit you're bound to the overheads most of the time). Which doesn't mean you can use the same kind of panning. But here it's perfectly possible to keep the hihat in the middle for example.
To keep things alive, it's better to create some space in your drum section, always keeping the rule of the overall balance in account. And there it's a matter of taste. You can go for an extreme effect that pulls attention to itself, or you can go for a more subtle one, that only creates space, but sounds "normal". |
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| Darkone55 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rob
I say this is going TOO far, and to me, sounds annoying:
Schulz/Deepsky
Thoughts? The lead HH is panned totally to the left:nervous:
(dunno if it's post mixed down version or what? Actually, disregard this entire post) :haha: |
The lead panned to the left?? I hear it in the mid. Only the open hihat is almost panned full to the left and the closed hihat on the kick almost fully to the right, what brings me on a nice idea. :D |
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| staticblue |
| by Lead HH he meant the principal open hat ;) (i suppose..) |
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| Darkone55 |
| quote: | Originally posted by staticblue
by Lead HH he meant the principal open hat ;) (i suppose..) |
Lol, yeah, well, like I said, it is panned to the left but I think 75% at the max. But the closed on the kick, same story, but to the right. So that makes it equal, isn't it? |
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| staticblue |
| yea and it sounds nice too :D |
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| Massive84 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dj Thy
You can go as far as it sounds good. Only experience and a little bit of taste will tell. What you have to pay attention though is the long term balance. If you pan something away, you should always have something in roughly the same frequency range as counterweight. For example, it's bad to pan a low/med sound hard left, and a very high frequency sound hard right. That will create a very weird (and unnatural) effect. Your overal balance should still stay in the middle. So always make sure you have a sound of the same kind to put on the other side. I see lots of people panning hard left/right all the time. Don't do that, use all the space you can to create an interesting stereo field.
For drums there are different views.
If you look at pop/rock music (with a real drumkit) there are people that try to create the feeling of the listener in a concert (so you have to know how a drumkit is composed, so you can pan accordingly).
Other engineers want to pan the drumkit as the listener was sitting on the drummers chair (the opposite of the first method).
The purists pan according to the real drum position (so, the snare won't be in the middle, if you look at a drumkit it's not exactly in the middle either), but mainstream music has always kept the snare dead centre for the last twenty years.
For electronic music, you are a little bit more free, as you're not really bound to reality (with an accoustic drumkit you're bound to the overheads most of the time). Which doesn't mean you can use the same kind of panning. But here it's perfectly possible to keep the hihat in the middle for example.
To keep things alive, it's better to create some space in your drum section, always keeping the rule of the overall balance in account. And there it's a matter of taste. You can go for an extreme effect that pulls attention to itself, or you can go for a more subtle one, that only creates space, but sounds "normal". |
Thanks for your time Thy :)
Nice story about that drumkit, never knew. |
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| Pjotr G |
| pretty funny how in the old days panning was way more extreme. Like on lots of beatles records the vocal is panned entirely to the right, and some guitar entirely to the left. Sounds pretty distinct actually, but through headphones it's not to nice. |
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| Massive84 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Pjotr G
pretty funny how in the old days panning was way more extreme. Like on lots of beatles records the vocal is panned entirely to the right, and some guitar entirely to the left. Sounds pretty distinct actually, but through headphones it's not to nice. |
i noticed that with old hiphop music also.
not sure about the new ones, since i hardly listen to that anymore. |
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| fr0st |
| quote: | Originally posted by Pjotr G
pretty funny how in the old days panning was way more extreme. Like on lots of beatles records the vocal is panned entirely to the right, and some guitar entirely to the left. Sounds pretty distinct actually, but through headphones it's not to nice. |
the reason they did that is because there were only able to work with 4 tracks.. And they had to make the best with what they had and for the most part up using l/r signals as seperate tracks..... Its amazing what they did with a 4 track. The sgt peppers album is one of the most amazing recordings ever.. |
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