mickeyratt
when setting up a good mix for a hard rock song what is a good rule of thumb for panning..Drums center? guitar panned right? ect..... any thoughts from the community?
He he - it's one of those 'how long is a piece of string' type of questions Jeffrey
As a general rule - main vocals, kick drum and bass guitar are panned dead centre.
The rest of the drum kit is panned very similarly to how it would appear on stage; so the snare would be very close (L/R 5 - 10%) to dead centre on one side, balanced on the other side by the ride cymbals. The toms would be panned from about 10 - 15% left to about 10 - 15% right. Finally, the extremes of the kit (crash cymbals) might be as far apart as 20% left and right.
Obviously if you are using pre-constructed stereo loops to make your drum tracks, the panning is usually already done for you.
As to other instruments in your mix, another general rule of thumb is 'Balance' - in other words, if you have a rhythm guitar part and a keyboard part, a good balance might be to pan one of them say 50 - 75% left, and the other 50 - 75% right. A similar approach could be used with backing vocals and harmonies.
A great tip for rock music is not to use just one distorted/overdriven rhythm guitar. Ideally, you should record two separate guitar tracks using different amps (or at least different amp settings) and even different guitars if possible. To get that in your face wall of sound, pan the two rhythm guitars as far apart as possible - i.e. one at 100% left and the other at 100% right.
Try not to get tempted to just record one guitar part and then cloning it - the very fact that it's almost impossible to record identical parts (they will always contain little nuances and timing differences) really helps to separate the wide panned rhythm parts without losing the power the technique gives you.
By giving a bit of thought and experimentation to where you pan your instruments, you will be able to help keep them all separate and clear in the mix.
With instruments that are normally found in the same space - i.e. as I mention above bass, kick drum and vocals are usually panned dead centre, using EQ to cut 'competing' frequencies can get rid of some of the mush that would otherwise ensue.
For an invaluable guide to getting your head around some of this stuff, I'd highly recommend reading (or even better copying and printing off) forum member Dean Roddey's excellent tutorial; here's a link to the sticky over in the
Guitar Tracks forum:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1345220 Hope that helps
Steve
post edited by SteveStrummerUK - 2011/01/19 14:58:45