Your Harmony Panning Scheme?

I really like a lot of harmonies and have tried different panning schemes.  If you have, for example, three-part harmony doubled—that is, two voices singing the low part,  two voices singing the mid part, and two voices singing the high part—how do you like to pan them?
 
One concept is to put L-M-H together on one side and L-M-H together on the other.  Example La-Ma-Ha all Left 50% and Lb-Mb-Hb all Right 50%.  Another way is to spread La-Ma-Ha-Lb-Mb-Hb across the spectrum like La=60% Left, Ma=40% Left, Ha =20% Left, Lb=20% Right, Mb=40% Right, Hb=60% Right.  And there are other schemes.
 
I dont like to go La-Ma-Ha-Hb-Mb-Lb because the two highs are too close together.
 
Anybody have an awesome way to do this?

I center the lead and any low bass harmonies, everything else is 5-10% off-center. That's mostly just to clear a space for the lead vocal. I'm not a fan of wide-panned harmonies because they can sound weird in headphones. I like Jonesey's concept of basing the pan on pitch; I'd never really thought about it that way but now that it's been mentioned, I realize that's pretty much how I've always done it as well.

My scheme ultimately depends on the rest of the mix, specifically what's going on with the lead vocal at the time. 

Typically for pop / rock choruses or pre-choruses where harmonies are present along with the lead vocal, I sometimes clone the lead vocal and pan the lead vocal 20% L and 20% R, so it takes up a bit more of the stereo spectrum, giving it just slightly more depth than simply having a single lead vocal track dead center (but not as much as if it were legitimately doubled by tracking it twice). 

I then would pan harmonies from that point outward, so they're not overlapping the same stereo space as the lead vocal, starting with lower frequencies towards the middle and higher frequencies towards the extremes, similar to Bristol_Jonsey's method, however sometimes I do put higher frequencies hard left and hard right, depending on the project - it just seems to work in providiing some distinction between lead and background vocals or for call and response vocal melody lines.   But this tends to sound really thick - if that's what you're going for.

So, it could be something like:
Lead Vocal L 20% L
Lead Vocal R 20% R
Low Harmony Left 50% L
Mid Harmony Left 75% L
High Harmony Left 100% L
Low Harmony Right 50% R
Mid Harmony Right 75% R
High Harmony Right 100% R

Hope this helps.
Russ

Good ideas, everybody.

Alegria

"bapu"

What do you all think of the harmony panning on THIS SONG?

You sir, iz an artist of Le Plug. 

Nha! Just your plain old garden variety opportunist who keeps his eyes open.

rtucker55


Hey Bapu,

That mix sounded Great! Considering ALL the things you had happening there it was easy to pick out everything in its own space. Again, Great job.  I really like the POP cowbell also... serious.

I originally had another EZDrummer cowbell but Reece (Beagle) thought it was too dark. It was the fist time I tried the Pop kit.

Beagle uses a W I D E pan for his becan.

It's necessary to hold a meal's worth of becan.

You can go all the way 100% L and R too on some vocal parts. Don't be afraid making vocals wide!