Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: Plenum n Heather on October 06, 2013, 04:36:45 PM
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Title says it all. Do you prefer LCR or soft pan mixing, and why? Do you start w LCR and then soft pan things you want to pop out? Do you reserve the outermost edges for ambient fill information? Or do you use the holes created by LCR to register spacial info? Do you belong to the school of thought that +/- 20% from center is still "center"?
I know this changes from project to project, but I am more interested in what your go-to is. And how do you handle something that has a lot of different elements -- like guitars, guitar harmonies, synth parts, synth pads going on throughout the track instead of just popping up occasionally?
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I have not really thought about this much, but I will read up on this now and try out things conciously.
What I do know is that whatever Sufjan Stevens does is what I love. =)
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Took me ages to figure out what LCR meant! (Left-Centre-Right, yeah? Only ever pan like that, no in-betweens).
Umm... Well, pretty much, I don't use LCR then :lol:
When I'm figuring out or tracking two parts, that are going to "balance" each other, yeah I'll be panning tham hard Left and Right. But by the time they're tracked, they invariably do NOT sound best in the song when panned that way (and by the way, I'm begining to move away from creating parts just to "balance" each other in the stereo... I seem to have been doing that for ages, and I've learnt that it's restricting me, and not always generating the best results).
I do tend to "pan the bugger if you're going to pan it", but definitely +/- 20% is not centre for me, and I do aim at using whatever space I've got. I tend to think in terms of the band arrayed in a semi-circle in front of me - guitarist A is over there, guitarist B over there, lead vocals right in front of me, backing singers arrayed in a semi-circle behind him, etc.
When panning similar sounds, eg voices, I put lower parts nearer the middle, higher parts near the edges - it just works better for me, sounds more cohesive. If I put two bass harmony voices, singing the same part, panned hard left and right, it just sounds naff. I end up having to track another two so they're not "exposed" like that. Instead, pan the two +/- 20%, and they work together, only two voices needed...