Stereo Panning (Staging instruments in a soundscape)

V8 · 2020-02-25T08:12:08+00:00

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...

Stereo Panning (Staging instruments in a soundscape)

ScottyDogg

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).

domhatch

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

domhatch

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|

ScottyDogg

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.

V8

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!).

domhatch

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|

ScottyDogg

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

domhatch

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|

morph

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

morph

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.

morph

And it has a huge library of rhythms and fills

morph

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.

morph

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

morph I wouldn’t high pass everything at 100Hz - vocals sure, generally guitars (but even then, 100Hz is quite high) but on a context by context basis, most drum parts other than kick but for bass guitar, I wouldn’t high pass any higher than 60Hz

To avoid mud on bass I would generally cut any shitty frequencies obviously (nothing super serious), chuck on a limiter like L1 from Waves to tame it a little, a bit of compression for movement and then if necessary, multiband compression to just cut a dB or two in the low end just when the low end hits hard (so not a permanent dip).

ScottyDogg

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

Yeti

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.

ScottyDogg

Aha! Magic Voodoo found (and SOOOOOOOOOOOOO easy to implement lol)

So with this, I'll be able to send audio through to OBS to record my daw. Pretty much can have a mic track inputting my voice with monitoring so I'll be able to talk at all points whether DAW is playing or recording or not. Thank goodness for Cockos (even though I use studio one lol)

domhatch

@ScottyDogg; when mixing/recording acoustic guitar, would you simply apply the same basic principles as you've described for 'rhythm' guitar? I.e. two takes of the same track, one each panned hard left and hard right?

tks
dh|

ScottyDogg

domhatch I've only really recorded acoustic once and that was intended as just on the left channel while some open chords rung out on the right so not sure what industry best practice is but I'd edge towards yes to two tracks with hard pan left/right

However, I did see this: https://www.audio-issues.com/recording-tips/get-kick-ass-acoustic-guitar-recording/

Here he talks about using two mics at once to record in stereo - so you'd need two inputs, one mic records left, the other right. This way you could get a nice stereo image as there'd be a slight timing offset and frequency differences between the mics.

You'd just need to be extremely careful to have your mics in phase. If you screw up the phase relationship, you'd have a big issue. Here you see a pretty solid example of phase cancellation in a snare - principle is the same anywhere though:

ScottyDogg

domhatch yo! So I saw this and thought of you:

Warren Huart should know exactly what’s what 🙂

morph

Try this for acoustic guitar
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.