Cardinal points pan law

[playagibson]

Hey fellow recording nerds

I've been working in Nassau for a while now and I got to record some tracks down here.
While down here I got to meet and hang out with Terry Manning.
He mastered a couple of new tracks of mine and of course I asked him to critique and give me any useful pointers.
The advice he gave me was the Cardinal points law, which is left-centre-right panning only and to make it sound good in mono.
I'm going to switch my ways of mixing and apply this rule.
Has anyone else in the forum tried this method.
Terry works a lot with Mutt Lange and apparently that's his preferred method of mixing as well.
It sounds crazy at first, but these guys are the best in the business, so it has to work.
Rich.

[VanderBoegh]

Do you mean he only pans in 3 directions - hard left, center, and hard right? Nothing in between?

~~Matt

[RockChild56]

Here's an article by Terry manning on the subject.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar09/a ... hnique.htm

A lot of good info.

Thanks for bringing up the subject Rich.

EJB

[playagibson]

Do you mean he only pans in 3 directions - hard left, center, and hard right? Nothing in between?

~~Matt

Yep.
It's all about eq, compression and levels.
Apparently, when done correctly you get a clean separated mix.
When I talked with Terry he said there are four points, hard left, centre, hard right and mute.
I have to assume that when recording drums, there's some discretion involved.
However , I've noticed a lot of drum mixes have the hi hats hard left etc...
Basically all low frequency instruments sit in the centre with the vocals and snare . Everything else is panned.
Terry mixed all the early ZZ Top, Zepplin 111 and a lot of he old R&B classics like Tina Turner, plus Shakira etc...
All his mixes are L-C-R

[feaker66]

I don't know what I am doing, so that's the way I have always done it. It's the only way I can hear a clear vocal?

Paul

[playagibson]

I've been mixing this way as well, however I used to pan other instruments and bk vocals at 9 or 6 o'clock etc...
With Cardinal points law you only pan hard left ,centre and hard right.

[feaker66]

When I tried panning an acoustic track 75% left I could always hear the 25% in the other ear. I thought, why would I want that extra clutter. Especially acoustic tracks that try to mask vocals anyway

Just sayin.....folks who are good at this mixing thing are going to say "WHAT"

Paul

[michael11]

WOW! That's quite an ear opener.

I rarely pan hard L R but I will now and see what happens.

Michael.

[andygabrys]

from the history books.

http://forums.taxi.com/topic109657.html

if it works for you, go for it.

not every album was done this way, but on a lot of them it works. its sort of dependent on how many instruments or layers there are in the mix, doing things that sound like different parts. On a tune where everything is doing the same thing, can't be anything wrong with this method.

Feaker - if you mix on headphones, you will hear something that isn't hard panned in both ears - that's right, and that is one of the possible drawbacks of mixing on phones - how does it translate to speakers?

also that article from sound on sound says something to the effect of L-C-R is great, cause you can make something really stand out if you put it in the halfway positions without having to resort to extra volume or eq.

[GavinKMusic]

Hi Rich, I know Terry and stumbled on LCR while surfing the net and have applied it to some of my earlier tracks but now since using a lot of midi VST's it kind of depends on the overall mix now. if the midi VST comes panned and its in stereo I tend to leave it unless an instrument really sounds better panned far right or left. I play it by ear. but definitely if I pan its either hard left or right now.

LCR is great to keep in mind when spreading guitars and strings to give more space for vocals, kick and bass. LCR seems to work well with mono tracks. if you want a special effect to pop out in a mix then 50% left or right. of course I'm just a beginner so not an authority on mixing or producing.

Btw I live in Nassau also. Funny thing is I posted a mix done LCR on FB and Terry liked and commended on it. Then I found the article on Terry about the Cardinal Points. small world.