Suggestions on mixing guitar, bass, drum rock trio

[Paulie]

Assuming an instrumental alt rock cue, looking for guidance on the recommended mixing layout for a rock trio:

• Would guitar get the center position as the lead instrument, with bass panned slightly left and drum pieces panned across the spectrum (assuming bass and snare centered)?
• Or, would guitar get 2:00 and bass get 10:00?
• Keep bass mono and spread guitar across (two tracks, one hard left, one hard right?)

I know there are tons of options, I'm looking for a good 'ol standby that the screeners will like.

Thanks!!!

[Piewackit1]

Hey Paulie,

Thanks for answering my Horn question.

I pan the guitars hard left and right. Each guitar part gets played twice. Bass is up the middle with the kick and snare. Toms get panned slightly and overheads are hard right and left.

This is one of my mixes for what it is worth.

https://www.reverbnation.com/piewackitq ... eak-me-out

[Len911]

Assuming an instrumental alt rock cue, looking for guidance on the recommended mixing layout for a rock trio:

• Would guitar get the center position as the lead instrument, with bass panned slightly left and drum pieces panned across the spectrum (assuming bass and snare centered)?
• Or, would guitar get 2:00 and bass get 10:00?
• Keep bass mono and spread guitar across (two tracks, one hard left, one hard right?)

I know there are tons of options, I'm looking for a good 'ol standby that the screeners will like.

Thanks!!!

Do you have any Brainworx plugins? They incorporate M/S in most of their plugins.
https://youtu.be/kSrXof8keTc

The beauty of the middle/side technique is that you can frequency adjust what goes to the middle and sides and check for phase cancellation by keeping it in the green.

For example on the bass and kick drum, you can keep the lowest frequencies to the middle while spreading out some of the harmonics to the sides, thus creating a "fuller" mix.

Another example, let's say the guitar, you could keep the focus of the guitar signal toward the center, but take the reverb return or other effect return and send it to the sides.

[elser]

I think it's totally subjective. If you listen to some early Hendrix recordings sometimes the drums would be panned hard left. I don't think that works for today's audience so drums are almost always in stereo. Most Rock trios will have some overdubs, so a rhythm guitar is typically panned left or right. Is there a vocal? That needs to be in the center, and then keep everything else out of the way. I don't think there are any rules, just listen to a lot of that music. Lately I've been panning bass just slightly off center, seems to me like it just gives a little more dimension, but some would claim it loses some power. Again, it's subjective.

[Kolstad]

I pan the guitars hard left and right. Each guitar part gets played twice. Bass is up the middle with the kick and snare.

+1 for a contemporary sound. I think most are used to hear gtrs mixed like this now. It's quite common to have 3-4 layers of double tracked gtrs in alt.rock. with different parts.

[Russell Landwehr]

You're really gonna need to keep your Kick, Snare, and Bass in the center. That's a given. I would probably also keep the HighHat in the center, then pan your toms and overheads hard.

Then it's a matter of how you treat the guitar. If there is only one part, then one cool trick is to put a 30sec delay on one side and then you've got instant stereo guitars. (check it in mono, though) Better yet, play the part twice and pan them hard.

OR the lazy-man's way (the way I do it OFTEN): Make two tracks of the ONE dry guitar part and then slightly quantize the audio of one of them... pan them hard and give them two different amps... or maybe even the same amp. (assuming virtual amps)

[mojobone]

Or you can go old school like Cream or early Van Halen; vocal and stereo drums up the middle, bass and guitar to either side. (pretty much how you'd hear it at the arena, except for the cute girl on your shoulders acting as a delightful set of earmuffs, while putting a crimp in your neck) I would probably only do this if I were emulating a pretty specific period; there are live records by The Who and Grand Funk Railroad that are also mixed this way, but you don't necessarily have to lay the tracks out like this in your mix application, since you can bus anything anywhere, digitally.

I do like to keep bass and kick drum tracks adjacent, since they're supposed to work together and may get similar processing, or you might want to key a compressor from one track to another. (the old trick for a sloppy kick; key it from the steadier bass track, or vice versa) O'course, nowadays you can just move the kick hits to where they were supposed to be, but the approach still has a certain charm.

It's nice having them together, in terms of visual alignment, so you don't have to resize a bunch of tracks or sort through different views, while you're setting up your processors. Everything else is really dependent on whatever mix moves you may have planned; you can do a lot with fader groups to help you quickly make sense of a complex mix, which can happen even with a trio, once you have enough mics, channels and overdubs involved. I try to premix everything so I never have more than eight faders to fiddle about with at final mixdown, even though I rely on automation these days, rather than an extra set of fingers supplied by the tea-boy.

One nice thing about Addictive Drums, you don't have to lay everything out with its own track unless you're doing some kind of special effect on your snare or whatnot, and often you can do that inside the program; you can keep all your kit on a single stereo track and automate the internal faders to control kick, snare, hat, L+R toms and L+R overheads. (of course, you can also automate the room mics, individual tom mics and FX sends, but I seldom use those)