Panning

5 months ago

Whats are your best techniques?

I've started to pan my sounds a lot more now and its giving me cleaner mixes but i wanna know how everybody else does it.

for example whats the furthest you would pan, more than +/- 50 or do people pan hard left and right for some sounds?

I obviously leave my kick bass and snares in the centre but everything else getts panned away.

in my last track i think my panning went something like

kicks - center
bass - center
claps - center
hats = +20
crash = -20
lead = +30
percussion loops with reverb etc = -30
sweeps = -50/+50
vox = center

am i actually going down the right road. Lets say for a typical track, A TYPICAL TRACK! i know about the whole 'experiment' or 'be original' stuff but there has be some kind of rough ground that people do as standard.

feel free to list how you would do it and maybe I/a few others could learn a thing or two.

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5 months ago

detonayta Pic

put a DONK on it lol

was thinking just the same thing dont have a clue where to start all my mixes have been panned dead center lol

but does it matter when tracks are played on a club system?

5 months ago

logic7heaven Pic

i tend to only pic a couple of percussion sounds and pan them, i may do leads or pads & strings but only if i find they need it.

5 months ago

djepik Pic

658 Posts
London

Hardhouse / Hardtrance / Harddance

I wouldnt necissarily say there is a set amount for each sound mate, every tune is different, try filling gaps without thinking too much about exact amounts... I personaly dont pan my main hat, kick, snare, clap, ride, crash... I do pan individual drum hits alot, midrangey hits that play off each other work really well when panned opposite to each other but again it wont alays be by the same amounts, you have to make sure you are aware of panning law and what your sequncer is set to with it as some are different, i think cubase is - 3db whereas logic is - 4.5db so someone who uses logic and says "i would pan by 50% left for this sound etc" and you use cubase and did the same thing would mean you would have to pan further on cubase to get the same effect... Also i wouldnt usually pan a main lead solely left or right (yet again panning law could really mess this up if you play the tune on a mono system) If you do pan the lead try automating it left and right but not by too much, just enough to make it move and trick the listener into thinking it is WIDE party

party

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5 months ago

iains Pic

as long as you check your mix in mono and you dont lose any of the sound you can do whatever you want really. i prefer to keep all my main percussion down the middle, maybe route fx and delays from them and pan the returns seperatly. anything from a stereo vst is gonna be panned hard left and right anyway so i wouldnt worry too much about losing any sounds on a club system. kick, bass, loops, hats and crashes will always be in the middle. single stabs, swirls, whooshes and other things will be panned all over the show to give my mixes depth smile

quick question off topic...are all club sound systems in mono?? id be surprised if that was true now...

5 months ago

weazaldj Pic

Nasty Repetitive Noise

In reply to

i tend to only pic a couple of percussion sounds and pan them, i may do leads or pads & strings but only if i find they need it.

yer same here just a couple of perc hits and possibly a hat to left and another to the right spreads it out a bit as my sensei told me smile

smile

5 months ago

djepik Pic

658 Posts
London

Hardhouse / Hardtrance / Harddance

In reply to

as long as you check your mix in mono and you dont lose any of the sound you can do whatever you want really. i prefer to keep all my main percussion down the middle, maybe route fx and delays from them and pan the returns seperatly. anything from a stereo vst is gonna be panned hard left and right anyway so i wouldnt worry too much about losing any sounds on a club system. kick, bass, loops, hats and crashes will always be in the middle. single stabs, swirls, whooshes and other things will be panned all over the show to give my mixes depth smile

quick question off topic...are all club sound systems in mono?? id be surprised if that was true now...

Quite a missleading statemnet there mate, you are right about it being panned hard left and hard right, but if someone then pans that instrument to the left or right it will effect the synth on a mono club system...

5 months ago

logic7heaven Pic

In reply to

In reply to

i tend to only pic a couple of percussion sounds and pan them, i may do leads or pads & strings but only if i find they need it.

yer same here just a couple of perc hits and possibly a hat to left and another to the right spreads it out a bit as my sensei told me smile

smile

if i have a 2-3 hats running then usually i'll have a main hat (normally open) centered and find two more that play off each other and pan then slightly left & right

if you are like most and use the vengeance sound cd's you'll find that most of the sounds on the cds have already been panned slightly

5 months ago

logic7heaven Pic

In reply to

as long as you check your mix in mono and you dont lose any of the sound you can do whatever you want really. i prefer to keep all my main percussion down the middle, maybe route fx and delays from them and pan the returns seperatly. anything from a stereo vst is gonna be panned hard left and right anyway so i wouldnt worry too much about losing any sounds on a club system. kick, bass, loops, hats and crashes will always be in the middle. single stabs, swirls, whooshes and other things will be panned all over the show to give my mixes depth smile

quick question off topic...are all club sound systems in mono?? id be surprised if that was true now...

i wouldn't think all club systems are mono these days

5 months ago

iains Pic

In reply to

In reply to

as long as you check your mix in mono and you dont lose any of the sound you can do whatever you want really. i prefer to keep all my main percussion down the middle, maybe route fx and delays from them and pan the returns seperatly. anything from a stereo vst is gonna be panned hard left and right anyway so i wouldnt worry too much about losing any sounds on a club system. kick, bass, loops, hats and crashes will always be in the middle. single stabs, swirls, whooshes and other things will be panned all over the show to give my mixes depth smile

quick question off topic...are all club sound systems in mono?? id be surprised if that was true now...

Quite a missleading statemnet there mate, you are right about it being panned hard left and hard right, but if someone then pans that instrument to the left or right it will effect the synth on a mono club system...

ha, sorry, didnt quite mean it like that. any stereo instruments that i use will always be panned hard left and right but would never normaly pan those anywhere else after that...

5 months ago

Barry Scott
joeaudio Pic

joeaudio Pic

Lots of sounds in great club tracks are panned loads, some tunes have super wide leads that sound great in mono and stereo.

As far as panning perc goes, I find if you pan one hit left then you want something else hitting right to balance it out. Also double tracking (eg finding two similar hihats then panning one hard-left and one hard-right) sounds really wide with no phasing in mono. Same with synths or vocals - recording the same take twice then hard panning the two copies.

There's a freeware VST called Stereoizer that adds loads of width yet keeps the mono signal intact.

5 months ago

mrmiyagi Pic

music music music

OP - No hard and fast rules. All your tracks are different, treat them different. Don't pan just for the sake of it. Do it to create proper space.

I usually only pan higher perc just slightly to give them space and so I can hear them in the mix. I do a fair amount of channel splitting though to create stereo. For example I'll have a mono clap and I'll duplicate that channel and send one hard left and one hard right. By hard, I mean about 20% I guess. (10pm and 2pm positions for the pan knobs). I'll do this for hats, claps, snares, whatever really needs more oomph and presence.

5 months ago

djepik Pic

658 Posts
London

Hardhouse / Hardtrance / Harddance

Mr Miyagi - You should be carefull when duplicating sounds as you describe as you might run into phasing problems... thumbsup

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5 months ago

mrmiyagi Pic

music music music

I only notice phasing problems if I delay one channel, so I stay away from that. If I do notice phasing and no delay, then I'll take away the extra channel. For the most part, I'm looking to double up the transients to get more volume. Esp when the sample isn't loud enough and I've already pushed the sampler master volume as far as I want to push it. Usually not a problem as I try to only use high quality samples, but with minimal techno sometimes you get these found sounds that are low in volume.

5 months ago

djepik Pic

658 Posts
London

Hardhouse / Hardtrance / Harddance

Normalise all your samples first... thumbsup

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5 months ago

mrmiyagi Pic

music music music

Aye, could do that but I'm a bit lazy ya see. laughing I did spend about 3 hours going through a new arrangement and cleaned the shit out of it. Actually took out a doubled channel due to phasing lol.

5 months ago

david bu hau
64 Posts

breaks and trance

okay... often times you can create a very wide effect by panning certian frequencies of (say a pad) sound just a little bit (fl studio equo lets you do this with ease). also, when you build a sound in a multiple oscilator synth, it's good to pan the oscilators a little bit away from each other sometimes to create some stereo range (DO NOT bother using so called stereo enhancers, cuz that's wack). also, in your synths, many times you can pan the filter outputs, which also creates some wideness...

making sure your bottom end is centered, and that the sub bass is MONO is very important... but do not do this with your regular bass sounds, you'll kill their "fattness"

a little panning on the hats and percussion is cool, but not necessary, and please don't overdo it... sometimes using a stereo phaser or flanger can add the stereo range you want.

to the guy who talked about club systems... club systems are in stereo dude, it's not like they're running through one big speaker.

david

5 months ago

alexpenn Pic

12631 Posts
Kersal

In reply to

to the guy who talked about club systems... club systems are in stereo dude, it's not like they're running through one big speaker.

david

They are also not running through a pair and there is no definete left and right in clubs as speakers are usually placed by a blind chimp on most ocassions.

5 months ago

Ry Thomas [Hardphaze A&R]
tommyb Pic

tommyb Pic

Minimal / Tech / Electro

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5 months ago

method Pic

The Sounds Of WAR

I often pan different percussive lines and stabs and stuff. I've found that even if you pan things just a touch, such as to -4 or +4, it all helps to create space and a cleaner mix. I very rarely pan things full Hard Left or Right tho, unless I'm automating it.

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