pan left, pan right, what the heck???

[feaker]

Never been here before. Just the word technology scares me.Took a vocal last night and panned it to the right 40% and it seemed to clean up the entire mix? Never messed with the pan control before.I googled for hours last night and didn't get much info.My question is, can I get a cleaner mix using the pan control and mixing in stereo? Right now everything is in mono both recording and what I place on the forums.Some recording I hear from folks are so clean here. I don't know if they are mastered or they just clean them up themselves.I read comments all the time about panning and EQ. Did a search on the forum and did not find anything.Do I export my final mix in stereo if I didn't use any panning?16 or 24 bit?Ok enough. I don't know much as you can see. A reccomendation of a good book would be greatly appreciated.I have to admit, I like the tweaking as much or more than the whole songwriting/production process.Paul

[Casey H]

Hi PaulI am a home recording novice who didn't even know what pan was until a few weeks ago. Some good friends here on the forum have taught me a lot.So, my advice is that of a novice... take the advice from the experienced folks first...My home recordings are only intended as roughs, but I do want them to sound better than my old tape recorder days..OK, the novice speaks...I record the main tracks, rhythm guitar and vocal, and duplicate them so there are two of each. Then, on each pair, I pan one right and one left. For example, I might do the vocal as L10 and R10 (to keep it relatively close to center) and the rhythm guitar as L30 and R30. I don't play anything else so I can't say about drums and bass but I like what was said above about bass down the middle. If I add a little lead guitar, I don't always double it, I might pan hard to the right or left to make it interesting. Sometimes on doubled tracks, moving the 2nd copy a few milliseconds delay after the first one adds effect. It takes trial and error. It works well on lead guitar and harmony tracks.When I record rhythm guitar, it always feels too bass-y for me. So I EQ those tracks to lower the bass and up the higher frequencies on those. I like giving the rhythm a brighter sound.I have been compressing each track before final mix, but I haven't got that down to a feel for what is needed, what works, etc... especially for my rough demos.So, there it is from one novice to another. When I get Autotune 5 software I will be REALLY dangerous!! I saw it for under $200 on the Internet the other day! Casey

[aimusic]

Panning? I didn't know they still used that method to seperate gold from minerals? ...Panning is awesome, I learnt about it 4/5 years ago, mucking about on a basic DAW system, I was like, ohhh what does this PAN button do and WHAM the guitar was in my left ear, then I thought but I told it to pan Right, then I realised I had the wiring of the speakers the wrong way around... nah just kidding, panning does a lot in the way of creating space.What I love listening to is say for instance some of the Beatles stuff, and you hear literaly the whole drum set panned to one side and the guitar to the opposite - but the scary thing is they made it work, I can listen to it and not think "damn one side is way heavier than the other" that is some serious skill...But like they said above, try and pan as you visualize the musicians... kind of helps the ears think they're listening to a LIVE-ish performance....

[Casey H]

PaulLook for some of the books in the "for dummies" or "idiot's guide" realm... I have CuBase LE and the manual is terrible coupled with them assuming you know the terminology to start with... I found an Idiot's Guide book on CuBase and it has helped a lot. I know there are some books on home recording in these series's... Casey

[ernstinen]

"Panning" is my middle name! I've experimented with panning since I got my first good board, a Soundcraft, back in the 1930's. It's really an artform in itself. There really are no rules, but most engineers pan lead vox, bass, kick drum, and snare pretty much around the center. But guitars can be in stereo (hard left & right), and every other instrument can be a variation on hard L & R. It's VERY important to spread the audio spectrum around for a big, clear sound, i.e. don't have ALL the bassy instruments (except bass & kick) or the bright instruments panned in the same area.I like panning a drum kit as the drummer would hear it. Toms from left to right, ditto cymbals. A good tom tom fill should pan all around the stereo spectrum.Mono rhythm guitars and keys can be panned somewhat left and right. Same with horns and percussion.I personally like a wide stereo spectrum rather than a narrow one. Plus, if you have a good stereo keyboard sound, it makes sense to use that effect by panning them hard L & R.I've never had a mastering engineer complain that I pan things TOO much! HTH,Ern

[davekershaw]

Jul 18, 2008, 9:01am, ernstinen wrote:"Panning" is my middle name!

[Mark Kaufman]

I've never tried what Casey said about duplicating a track and splitting it. Does that really help? Part of me keeps thinking that one track panned to the center would sound the same as two identical tracks panned evenly...? I'll have to try that one...Feaker, Ern speaks the Wisdom. Keep the drums, bass and lead vocal toward the center (although you will achieve more clarity and separation by panning them ever so slightly to their own little niche close to center). A lead vocal too much to the right or left might never get heard by someone with a poor stereo speaker set-up, so keeping it toward center is pretty much the norm.One cool thing: you can achieve a very full and blissful sound with acoustic guitar by playing the part twice (not duplicating the same track, but playing the same part twice) and panning one to the left and the other to the right...the slight difference in sound from having it played two different times gives it a great "wall of sound" effect.Panning definitely helps delineate each part. EQ can do the same thing in another way: if each instrument "owns" a little piece of the EQ spectrum, even more delineation will result. Example: bump the low frequency on the bass track but lower the other frequencies somewhat on that bass track. Do the same with the other tracks, only with a different section of the EQ spectrum...let on acoustic have plenty of high end, give another more middle....maybe a vocal "owns" more of the higher middle, etc..Play around with it. Hopefully your EQ plug in shows you virtual faders to help visualize this concept. But that concept, along with panning, should really widen your stereo field and enhance all the separate parts of your mix.Good luck fumbling about like I have been for the past several months!

[Casey H]

Jul 18, 2008, 9:29am, lyle wrote:I've never tried what Casey said about duplicating a track and splitting it. Does that really help? Part of me keeps thinking that one track panned to the center would sound the same as two identical tracks panned evenly...? I'll have to try that one...Beats the crap out of me!! I'm the novice here... Warning: Listening to me about this stuff is dangerous!!

[feaker]

AubPlease tell me you had that on file and just pasted it.Man that is a lot of information.I have everything printed out now to put by my lazyboy for evening study sessions.Yours will be in the "advanced" section.Will have to look up things like "roll off" Tomorrow I am going to take the plunge and try implementing some of these tricks.Might have to use the ole "undo" command. Can't get into too much trouble. Brain is starting to go ito "overload" now.Thank you for all of your timePaul

[aubreyz]

Jul 18, 2008, 11:07am, feaker wrote:AubPlease tell me you had that on file and just pasted it. Nope. Was having a double quarter pounder from McDangers and felt like I needed to pay it forward a bit to make up for my indulgence Quote:Man that is a lot of information.I have everything printed out now to put by my lazyboy for evening study sessions.Yours will be in the "advanced" section. Don't worry about understanding it all. Just saturate yourself with information. It's like learning a new language-- pretty soon all the mystery words will start making sense.Quote:Will have to look up things like "roll off" A quick google of EQ roll off and this was the 2nd match. Good stuff:http://www.practicalpc.co.uk/computing/ ... e:Tomorrow I am going to take the plunge and try implementing some of these tricks.Might have to use the ole "undo" command. Can't get into too much trouble. Brain is starting to go ito "overload" now.Thank you for all of your timePaulI want to just say this, IMHO this whole game is not so much about HOW to do something as it is knowing WHAT you want to do. That may not make sense, so here's a real world example. My 19 year old son has been playing and writing since he was about 12. The last couple of years he wanted to get into recording and we got him a small Pro Tools setup. I taught him the basics and then just pretty much let him experiment. I tried to teach him not "how to do this" but rather how to learn how. Essentially there are not that many basic principles to learn in sculpting sound-- EQ, compression, effects, panning-- I've probably left something out but most tools are just combinations or variants of these things. So you do need to know how to use and EQ, but the reason why is what's important.So my son recently asks me, how do I get a better guitar sound. I went over the options of micing techniques and direct signals, then told him to find some examples of what he wanted it to sound like. Listen carefully to how it's panned and effected in a recording you like, get that kind of tone from your amp and experiment with the things you know to do until you get the sound. He spent several weeks playing with sounds, learning how to get big fat wall of sound guitars and small thin but in your face clean leads. The thing is, I could have saved him some time, but the results were much better than if I had showed him how. He learned the process of learning and ended up with some guitar tracks that are more unique for his sound than what i would have probably recorded.All that to say this--- find a sound you want to emulate and figure out how to get it. You found the pan nob-- are learning how to use it, now the fun part of figuring out WHAT to do with it begins. Listen closely to stuff that is in you genre. How is panned used? What do you like and want to emulate? It's a fun game and even though I've been doing this for many years, I still listen and play that game a lot.What do you want it to sound like? That for me is the key to all things production.Aub