Tips and Tricks using Pan?

PhirstN3rd

PhirstN3rd

yo
Just wondering if anyone has any industry secrets on using pan. When I'm mixing I always just wanna center everything, but I'm trying to get those pro spacey mixes, so that's not gonn cut it anymore.

Like, take drums for instance. Could you get away with panning your drums hard left? How often do yall double-track an instrument and have one hard left and one hard right? How do you get that "deepness" in your mix...like you hear sounds coming from the upper and lower regions, not just the left and right?

I know what yall are gonna say, "just do whatever sounds good," but I know there are some easy tricks that I'm not aware of. Thanks.
 
I usually mix like this.

Keep kicks centered. Snares should be centered or slightly panned(5-10%)Hihats(20-35%)all instruments between 10-35% depending on sound.

But honestly in the end there is no template. You gotta trust your ears.
 
deRaNged 4 Phuk'dup said:
I usually mix like this.

Keep kicks centered. Snares should be centered or slightly panned(5-10%)Hihats(20-35%)all instruments between 10-35% depending on sound.

But honestly in the end there is no template. You gotta trust your ears.
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Alright yeah, thanks for the feed. This is actually really close to what I do. I guess the real mixing work comes in eq.
 
There's the hard left-hard right double kicks trick, but it depends on what sort of kicks you're dealing with and how you want it to sound. Stereo-Imagers are an option, but I don't know how reliable.
 
Ak-Nolij said:
There's the hard left-hard right double kicks trick, but it depends on what sort of kicks you're dealing with and how you want it to sound. Stereo-Imagers are an option, but I don't know how reliable.
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What does the hard pan left and hard pan right trick do besides nothing.
I do get the point of that.
 
The real trick is to use widening. sure you could pan a lil but that could also make the track seem un-balanced. also eq and compress all of the instruments, so that you are the puppet master of all of the audio channels. Also, Think of eq'ing a little like tetris. Each audio channel or instrument is a block and you have to set the blocks in the right area on the eq graph or the block could overstep its boundries therefore, going into another instruments frequencies. but that doesnt exactly mean cut the rest of the frequencys off; just lower those frequencies that are out side of the boundries.

It you take advantage of what i just put down your mixes will sound real nice
 
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Drewtrax said:
also eq and compress all of the instruments, so that you are the puppet master of all of the audio channels.
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Bad advice. Never compress all of the instruments!
 
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learn the art of automation...makes things easier...one of the best practices I ever learned...no more fader riding...
 
Automation? I don't think automation would solve anything in terms of panning. I think this guy was referring to panning instruments. And by panning instruments that means leaving them in that panned position for the whole song. Automation deals with dynamic changes throughout a song (positions of instruments changing, effects on instruments changing). Your advice is completely irrelevant Jotz.
 
illapino said:
Automation? I don't think automation would solve anything in terms of panning. I think this guy was referring to panning instruments. And by panning instruments that means leaving them in that panned position for the whole song. Automation deals with dynamic changes throughout a song (positions of instruments changing, effects on instruments changing). Your advice is completely irrelevant Jotz.
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u can use automation to record panning positions and not everything stays hard right or left or center, some things bounce around...learn the relevance of what u speak on b4 u speak..IDF...
 
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