LCR panning.....

[CHuckmott]

The times I've tried, especially wth reverb, on guitars, kind of had a retro Black Keys kind of sound to it I thought. Didn't seems to work on the country one I just posted (so didn't pan 'em that way).

[Russell Landwehr]

I think that LCR is a derivative from the old consoles when stereo was first invented. there were (to my knowledge) 3 busses - one center, one hard left, and one hard right that you could assign a track to. so no in between.

in my mind, I am trying to figure out how you would pan drums using LCR. okay fine, one OH hard L, and one OH hard R. Assume you also have close mics on the toms and the hihat. Isn't there going to some slight phasey weirdness between your hi-hat and tom close mics and your overheards if you slam all the close mics hard L and R? just a little?

I guess if you do the Glyn Johns method of 2 kinda OHs and just a snare and kick you don't have to worry about it. maybe that is part of that method. hmmmmm.

seems like most tunes these days have something pinned to the far L and R to establish the width of the song, and a lot of stuff between as well. I'm with EO on that one. you have the real estate, why not use it?

After becoming aware of LCR I found out that 99% of my favorite albums and songs were mixed that way. I'm still surprised when I listen to them in headphones or earbuds. The toms in some of my favorite songs are panned hard left and right.

As far as phasing issues on miked drums, from what I understand, time-shifting tracks is a great tool for fixing that phasey thing. But that along with phase and balancing takes a bit of tweaking to get it right. Check with Mike Senior on that. He goes into great detail in his book "Mixing Secrets for the small studio."

However, even Professor Senior doesn't keep everything hard LCR. He will play with the in-between stuff a tiny bit.

Russell

Edit: like eo said, though, why not put it where it sounds best. And LCR panning is GREAT for "separation" and "punch" and "impact", specially on songs that have many contemporary instruments. Orchestral pieces on the other hand...

[Russell Landwehr]

FWIW, mixing instructions I received a few years back from the production music division of the world's largest music publishing conglomerate specifically warned against hard panning anything for production music purposes...unless it was "stereo" or doubled sounds (e.g. stereo piano, reverb return, doubled rhythm guitars etc).
Something you might consider if you are producing tracks for media uses...

WOW!

Thanks.

I've wondered about this... since the music for Film and TV is not there for the impact of the song, but the need to support the video.

[mazz]

Matt is referring to music mixed specifically for film/TV placements. Remember that the systems that people "listen" to our music on when it's behind a scene can be anything from a mega home theater to a tiny TV in the kitchen to a system with the speakers placed behind plants with one speaker wired out of phase to anything in between! Our mixes need to survive that audio nightmare and add value to the scene without calling undue attention to itself.

Another observation: Don't underestimate the value of mono signals! I've been recording a lot of my own hand percussion lately and I record 98% of it in mono. It really clarifies things to have a "point source" that is completely in phase (the nature of mono, DUH!) and can be placed anywhere in the stereo spectrum. This will often obviate the need for wide panning because these little percussion flourishes, if placed somewhat off center but not fully left or right, will tend to add that little bit of space in an otherwise washy stereo perspective. What our ears perceive in the real world as "stereo" is really the interaction with that point source with the space that it occurs in. In a mix, the mono signal, when panned, will still hit the reverb and some of it's signal will end up on the other side. To my ears, this sounds pretty natural if done right.

Recently in a mix I narrowed the stereo spread of a virtual organ with the Leslie sound panned hard left and right. In the mix is was simply getting lost because it was just too wide. Since it was playing the melody, narrowing it down really focused the sound. Speaking of organs specifically, there's a big difference in sound between a Leslie cabinet mic'ed in stereo vs. mono. Try it!

Also I've narrowed down drum tracks if the piece needs to sound more like it's from a specific time period where they may have mic'd the drums with one mic or just allowed it to be picked up by the overall mic'ing of the band.

There's lots of options, but I would certainly keep the sage advice of Matto in the back of my mind when mixing specifically for film/TV placements.

Cheers,

Mazz

[mojobone]

Matto's excellent point applies to mono tracks; anything mono that's hard-panned can get lost, and not just on TV, but also on FM stereo radio. If you mix from the point of view that every mix element has to have a reason to exist, you probably can't afford to lose anything, but if as Mazz suggests, your panned mono track is fed to a reverb bus, (whether stereo or mono) you'll at least hear your track's reverberations even if you lose one channel, so a dry mono track probably shouldn't be hard-panned. Widening and narrowing stereo tracks is also a useful technique, and leads naturally into discussion of the tilt control, which is a pan control for natively stereo files. (though there's also such a thing as a tilt EQ) A tilt control usually has a L/R knob and one for 'Spread'. We should probably always check all our mixes in glorious mono, to remove all doubt.

[mojobone]

I think that LCR is a derivative from the old consoles when stereo was first invented. there were (to my knowledge) 3 busses - one center, one hard left, and one hard right that you could assign a track to. so no in between.

in my mind, I am trying to figure out how you would pan drums using LCR. okay fine, one OH hard L, and one OH hard R. Assume you also have close mics on the toms and the hihat. Isn't there going to some slight phasey weirdness between your hi-hat and tom close mics and your overheards if you slam all the close mics hard L and R? just a little?

I guess if you do the Glyn Johns method of 2 kinda OHs and just a snare and kick you don't have to worry about it. maybe that is part of that method. hmmmmm.

seems like most tunes these days have something pinned to the far L and R to establish the width of the song, and a lot of stuff between as well. I'm with EO on that one. you have the real estate, why not use it?

Using modern plugins based on HRTF, it's possible to pan sounds beyond the left and right speakers, it's just seldom a good idea to use those techniques for important mix elements, since the full effect occurs only in the stereo sweet spot and/or over headphones. Another useful four-mic drumkit technique is kick (C) snare (C) and Mid-Side OH (L and R) The tilt control I mentioned in my previous post is what you'd use to "pan" a Mid-Side pair. (width can be adjusted using the Mid and Side faders, if you don't have a fancy plugin)

More info here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov11/a ... c-1111.htm and at http://www.brainworx-music.de/

[mazz]

Obviously we can do whatever we want as long as it works stylistically, assuming we are writing to a stylistic brief, but if the suggestion about panning comes from a super high end successful library (via a super high end successful composer), it might be worth paying attention!!

On a technical note: In Digital Performer, the DAW I use, there is a stock plugin called "Trim". It's not only for trimming the gain of a track, it also has level control for Left and Right signals. It defaults to having the signals "linked" but they can be un-linked so that you could put the signals at 9 and 2 o'clock for instance. Then you could use the channel pan pot to move that altered signal across the spectrum. The gain for each channel can also be trimmed individually. Very useful. I suspect most DAWs have some control like this for stereo signals.

Good discussion!!