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  • Recording

  • Stereo Panning (Staging instruments in a soundscape)

By @ScottyDogg from the Contrast Challenge thread

Ok sweet so from a high level, there's some key things to bear in mind:

Bass Guitar: Centre (depending on genre it can be nice to have gritty overdrive tone and DI tone tracks)

Rhythm Guitars: Ideally you want one track panned hard left and one panned hard right for all rhythm parts (you need two different takes, can't copy/paste, as it's the slight differences in timing and how you hit the notes that give you a nice stereo image - copy pasting will result in tracks sounding mono i.e. down the centre with no width). For meaty parts (you'll hear it at times in Metal - I know Machinehead does it often and sometimes bands like Periphery, you can quad track parts - here you'd have two on the left and two on the right of each rhythm part - this adds some meat but affects clarity a bit)

Leads: Solo's you'd want Centre, harmonies I would have a track panned hard left and a double panned hard right (again, two takes for width) and on other leads it's up to you if you want some leads centred or some doubled and hard panned)

These tend to be industry best practice.

Drums: These are a real doozy. You generally get audience perspective or drummer perspective - I personally prefer drummer perspective but there's arguments each way. for drummers perspective:

Kick and Snare: Always down the centre
Hi Hat: maybe around 45ish Left
Rack Tom 1: around 25-35 left
Rack Tom 2: 10-15 Right
Floor Tom 1: 30-45 Right (I'd say 30 if you have a second floor tom otherwise 45)
Left Crash: 45 left
Right Crash 45 right
Ride: 35 right
Overheads: You should either have a left track and a right track or a stereo track with panning in place - either is acceptable but in the case of a left and a right track, be sure to pan them (just as a side note, when mixing other people's recordings, this is usually how you'd work out whether they mic'ed for audience or drummer perspective)

For the drums, these are approximates as I would say there's no absolute - whatever sounds best is right and a mix might call for specific adjusted values for things to fit. Basically, picture yourself behind a drum kit with the snare and kick right in front of you while looking ahead - where do you picture each drum piece in relation to centre?

When programming drums, you would either be generating a track per component or the software will be spitting out a stereo drum track. If the former, be sure to pan the multitracks when mixing, if the latter, see if you can set the panning in the software before exporting a stereo drum image (though personally I'd recommend a track per piece)

Then for vocals, you want a lead track down the centre and thereafter the sky is the limit really - personally, I like having a Left double and a right double to have nice wide vocals (panning depends on the mix - if a dense mix I'd pan like 80% Left/Right to leave space for the guitars etc. that are 100% either side. Also, harmonies and accent tracks can go down the centre or with doubles you can pan them).

V8 stickied the discussion.

    Noice 🙂

    Thinking of putting together a youtube video detailing my process of songwriting and recording (just my stuff in particular - next time I record with a live drummer I'd consider covering that separately - live drums is a MASSIVE undertaking lol)

    So thinking all the way from guitar to a song ready to be mixed (mixing is such a huge thing so I probably won't approach that) including tips on optimizing that I have learnt about/figured out as I went along (also, it'll double as how to do it on a bit of a budget as I don't have particularly expensive recording gear lol) - is this something you peeps will be interested in?

    ScottyDogg youtube video detailing my process of songwriting and recording (just my stuff in particular

    That would be grand - I'd also keep it 'in the box' (like you mentioned skip live drums!) - basically what the home hobby peep could achieve?

    But I should start a thread for recording processes separately - @Jazzman105 had some grand thought on his process and it will be useful to have them all in one thread - i'll get it up this week & tag you.

      ScottyDogg yup. Also, maybe how you do a video. Camera and audio... do you use a DAW.. or just video editing stuff. Ie. Is it a camera and daw.. or some magical voodoo process

        guidothepimmp yeah, how I make videos can come later - still figuring it out haha. At the moment for playthroughs/music videos, I just press play on my DAW and play along while filming.

        For talky stuff, I used a lapel mic thingy plugged into my phone (since then I have bought a condenser mic so will use that to record in my daw but I need to figure out how to show stuff in my daw (OBS) and record audio (daw) while showing what I do in the daw (easiest would be to send daw audio to OBS but that’s taking me time and driver blue screens to figure out lol - one day I might be using that sweet magical voodoo process).

            This is an awesome - and simple - breakdown. 😁 Any ideas to slay the following beastie:

            • I generally create an entire midi drum track (because I don't have a readily available drum kit or the ability to play one, let alone an entire drum mic kit).
            • Once I'm happy with the general idea, I assign the VST
            • Would the best route be to separate the individual drum components to individual midi tracks, then assign the VST to all of them and start your mix from there?
            • Or should you assign the VST first and then go fiddling with what goes where from there?

            Shotto
            dh|

            P.S. What I really enjoy about this is that it gives you a starting point, with a basic drum kit to play around with. Once you're happy with what you can get just flying by the seat of these ideas, you can start doing things with additional percussion, etc. Well played @ScottyDogg

            V8 I'd also keep it 'in the box'

            Ah. I missed this. Precisely what my post above was alluding to...

            domhatch Any ideas to slay the following beastie:

            This.

            Thanks, lads!
            dh|

            • V8 replied to this.

                  domhatch Yo dude - so in my songwriting template, I have ONE drum midi track. Within Studio One, this is an Instrument Track. Thereafter, this instrument track is multi-outed to a number of channels (Kick, Kick Sub, Snare Top, Snare Bot, Tom 1 2 3, Hats, Ride, overheads, rooms).

                  So I'll edit the one midi track and then once the songwriting is done and I'm ready to mix, I'll export stems for the channels - I end up with mono and stereo tracks (depending on what needs to be mono/stereo). Thereafter, I'll bring the stems into my mix template (working with WAVs is a lot less system intensive than with a virtual instrument) plus, I like to commit before mixing - if I leave it as a virtual instrument with settings that can be changed, I'd never end up committing to anything and would never get anywhere.

                  What drum vst are you using? You'd need to check out how to set up the routing between that and the DAW you're using - I use GetGood Drums (Kontakt instrument) and Studio One so figured out how to do that routing.

                    ScottyDogg i use MT Power Drum (coz it's free and it's pretty good). What can I say, I'm not much for spending los dineros where i can possibly avoid it.

                    so the thing you're suggesting is to mess with a multi-out setup? i shall give that a bash. as it were. and reaper is about as system-intensive as using a mouse. perhaps i can use studio one for the drum track and once i'm happy, import that into reaper for messing with the other stuffs. we shall see what we shall see... i'm only just getting begun with this - normally i just make do with a one-track, all the way down the centre vst drum track.

                    or something. but essentially, it's the basis of the drum mix template i'm really grateful for.

                    shot man!
                    dh|

                      domhatch So Studio One is a DAW just like Reaper is so have a search around for multi-out routing with mt power drum (if you think it's good, it's good - you can do plenty without spending money 🙂 ) There should be plenty of resources on how to do the multi out routing at least with Reaper, not sure what documentation is out there for it.

                      Alternatively, does MT Power Drum let you set panning within the VST? If so, you could always set the panning there and then export a stereo track for song purposes (obviously you'd be very limited to mixing later but for demos etc. that'd be more than adequate

                        I also use MT Drummer, it also sets up the panning of the drums in the stereo picture automatically. It seperates the elements into their own tracks so you can control the volumes and panning individually. You can also set it up the way you want, with EQ, Compressors and reverbs per track and then save it as a Track template.

                          And it has a huge library of rhythms and fills

                            On guitar I have two tracks, one panned left and the other right (full or partially panned) . I glue the track contents together so it is a single unit and copy it onto the second track. (i.e. both tracks have the same recording). When you play them they will sound like they are in the middle. I then nudge one of the two recordings forward a bit in 5ms jumps, At about 10 to 15ms suddenly the sound goes wide. It is an awesome effect.


                              domhatch I'd also keep it 'in the box'

                              Ah. I missed this. Precisely what my post above was alluding to...

                              When I was djenting away, and we tracked our album, - we-very briefly- considered tracking live drums. Would have likely quadrupled the cost/time and I don't think we would have finished the album without trying to murder each other. And it let the drummer write 'impossible' parts - sigh - in fairness, he wrote & programmed great midi drums.

                              I do the simplest of staging, pretty much as ScottyDogg has it :

                              Vocals : Lead vox centre, backing - it depends.
                              Bass : Usually centred.
                              Guitars : No 1 trick (it been mentioned many times) - record two takes, one panned hard left, other hard right.
                              Drums : Whatever Addictive Drums does - it has a internal panned setup for cymbals, toms, etc... For most things (rock/metal/band music) it's okay. For electronic music it sucks - for some reason I expect kick/snare/hats centrered for trance/techno/etc.

                              I like the word 'soundstage' - it helped me get the idea of using panning and reverb when mixing a bit clearer in my head. E.g for rock I would (try to) mix a virtual stage (using panning & reverb) and place the instruments in that virtual space. While for electronic stuff - I'd mix it as though you were watching a DJ playing back a track (exceptions do apply!).

                                  With harmonies I separate the high and higher and put them either side of the singer

                                  Other considerations are to give your tracks EQ's so as to prevent your sound from muddying the track. For example on Bass you want a low pass filter, below the voice. I normally put all my instruments eventually though a single track and on this I use an EQ with a dip in the section of my vocal range. In my case 80 to about 250hz.

                                  Additionally there is a lot of mud in the lower frequency ranges, boominess from acoustic guitars etc. All instruments need a HPF cutting off everything below 100 hz, except the Kick Drum

                                  I like to visualise the sound as a 3d box(see image)

                                  ScottyDogg Alternatively, does MT Power Drum let you set panning within the VST?

                                  i'm pretty sure it does; check out what @morph has to say above. i haven't really had much of a go at these things yet; like i said, i've been sticking everything pretty much down the centre, especially when it comes to drums.

                                  but, thanks to your post, will be playing around with stereo panning much more from now on.

                                  thanks again ScottyDog
                                  dh|

                                    ScottyDogg "Alternatively, does MT Power Drum let you set panning within the VST? If so, you could always set the panning there and then export a stereo track for song purposes (obviously you'd be very limited to mixing later but for demos etc. that'd be more than adequate"

                                    The VST offers you two ways of doing this, one is this view (see image)

                                    And you will see all the sub-tracks in your track view that can be controlled.

                                    you also get this view you can click on each drum to hear the sound and this is also a visual representation of where they placed the drums in the stereo image

                                      Slightly off topic for this forum but I've done a little mixing of barbershop quartets. Amusingly it's quite similar to drums. Barbershop is pretty formulaic and quartets always stand in the same order (bass, lead, tenor, bai). So, like drums, you pan then either from the quartet's point of view or (more usually) from the audiences. You don't tend to pan them too hard though because when you only have 4 instruments, confining two to hard left and hard right would be quite jarring.

                                      morph that’s great - so then I would just figure out how to do routing in your daw so you can export each individual part to wav (or at least split to different tracks) for mixing purposes do you can eq, compress and/or saturate each piece individually