Premier Rock Forum

I've been mixing a lot of stuff lately (mostly loud rock), and wondering if anyone else thinks heavily about the panning of a mix?

I know it's a matter of taste, and probably heavily dependant on the song in question, as well as the artists wishes (to some degree : ), but does anyone have any advice to offer with regards to panning the drum kit?

I normally find myself mixing the drums as follows:

Kick: Dead center
Snare: off to the right--between 1 and 2 o'clock
Left Overhead: Hard left (I think between 8 and 7 o'clock?)
Right Overhead: Hard right (I think between 4 and 5 o'clock?)
Rack Tom: right to about 1 o'clock
Floor Tom: left anywhere from 11 to 9 o'clock
Room Mic: Dead center

I've also tried reversing my pannings to get things panned from the drummer's perspective.

As you can see, I am used to working with small kits.

I normally find myself keeping vocals (minimally the lead vocal) dead center, bass dead center, and guitars panned no further right than 3pm, and no further left than 9pm (though on occasion, I do find it sounds nice to split them out a bit wider, to 8pm and 4pm).

Keys generally get left dead center, in my mixes, unless the song is extremely busy, in which case, I may pick a side and give it a nudge somewhere between 11 and 12 or 12 and 1.

I'd just be interested to see if anyone else has either A.) any advice I might try for getting better separation, or B.) just in the mood to share their favored panning techniques?

I personally try to limit the amount of EQ and reverb in my mixes, unless something REALLY calls out to me for such assistance.

After getting used to my PreSonus ACP 88, I've also found, I prefer to limit the amount of compression I add to tracks, first trying to make do w/o compression (though I normally find myself applying it to Kick/Snare--often gated to cut out excess cymbal noise. Bass often gets heavily compressed in my mixes, as I'm used to recording bassists that need the leveling help. A shame. Vocals--I try not to compress, but find I often need it to lightly level it out within the mix).

Oh--and I'll sometimes add compression to the toms, though more often, I only employ the gate, to cut out excess cymbal noise.

I try never to touch guitars, unless the player is not happy with the sound, but in those cases, I often IMPLORE them to re-record, allowing me to play with mic combinations/blending to get the sound they want w/o drastic use of effects, EQ or compression.

While I've been tracking for years, I've only been taking a stab at being a mixing engineer within the last year and a half (roughly)--any resources anyone could point me to (other good threads, message boards, or books on the topic....?)

Kick: Dead center
Snare: off to the right--between 1 and 2 o'clock
Left Overhead: Hard left (I think between 8 and 7 o'clock?)
Right Overhead: Hard right (I think between 4 and 5 o'clock?)
Rack Tom: right to about 1 o'clock
Floor Tom: left anywhere from 11 to 9 o'clock
Room Mic: Dead center

That is fine, but in the stereo master of all those tracks I would have the left at 8/9 o'clock and the right at 4/3 o'clock so that it does not totally fill the stereo spectrum in a weird way. Also, i find it varies with the instrumentation. A good referance would be those terrible jazz stereo lps on Atlantic in the early sixties where the piano and drums are in one speaker ane the bass and reeds in the other. You have to make the stereo panning of the drum mix fit naturally in the realm of the other instruments. If the bass player is on the right and the guitar player on the left, you dont want a drum fill to start before the bass player and end after the guitarist.

like most (all?) drummers, i have a very fixed idea of how i like my drums to sound; of course, this also extends to how i like them to be recorded and mixed.

i always mix drums from the drummer's perspective; this entails a reflection if the drummer is left handed.

because i am used to the sound of drums from `inside' the kit, i tend to pan the close microphones very widely --- indeed, i was surprised by how conservative were the panning suggestions made earlier in this thread. For a right-handed, two-tom kit as described above, i would usually pan as follows:

*) kick: dead center
*) snare: slightly left, 1 o'clock maximum
*) rack tom: hard left
*) floor tom: hard right
*) room mic, left: hard left
*) room mic, right: hard right

(the hard panning of the room microphones applies whether the signals are derived from spaced or coincident microphones.)

i don't often use overheads; in part, this is the reason for the wide panning of the tom microphones. specifically, the hi-hat and other left-side cymbals appear mostly as bleed into the rack tom close microphone, while the ride cymbal and other right-side cymbals appear mostly as bleed into the floor tom close microphone. i almost always find that capturing an accurate spatial localization of the cymbals is the most difficult aspect of recording a drum kit.

in my experience, it is the stereo room microphones that make this wide-panning strategy work. but with just a single center-panned room microphone (as described earlier in this thread), i would be even more inclined to pan the close microphones widely. a center-panned mono room signal will --- unless the room is very large indeed --- tend to give the overall sound a far weaker stereo presentation; the wide panning of the close microphones will tend to compensate for this.

if no room microphones were used in the recording, such wide panning can sound unnatural. in this situation i would be likely to pull the tom microphones in to the center a little.

if there was also a second (lower-pitched) rack tom, i would pan that to the right, somewhere around 3 0'clock.

whats the advantage of panning the snare slightly to the side?

ive always had it dead center, i seem to have always heard it dead center, is it better off to the side?

or is it to balance out that the left overhead might be slightly closer.

ALSO - ive seen this a couple of times (i.e. the pictures in the insert for Dave Holland's 'prime directive') but having the overheads physically in the center and pointing outwards. much like this: /\ instead of this: \__/

whats the difference?

with a `standard' drum set, the snare _is_ placed slightly to the side of the center line through the kick drum. panning the signal from the snare microphone(s) encodes this positional information into the mix. but many people do mix the snare to the center --- like all this stuff, it is purely a matter of taste.

with the overhead microphones towards the center of the kit, pointing outwards, you have a `coincident' stereo arrangement. this is widely ('though not universally) regarded as being the best way to produce an accurate stereo image. the stereo image results from the differences in signal amplitude between the two microphones (which must be _directional_), rather than any differences in arrival time or phase.

with the other arrangement (microphones towards the left and right edges of the kit, pointing inwards), you have a `spaced' stereo arrangement. this produces a `softer' stereo image when used at a distance (the spatial localization is not as good as with a coincident array). However, when used close to the source (as in this case), the separation between the left and right channels can seem much better. in this application, it isn't really correct to call this a `spaced stereo' technique --- it is much more like spotting. in this case, the microphones can have any polar pattern(s), including omnidirectional.

hmm ... i don't seem to be explaining this very well.