Panning in your productions

[XHipHop]

Where are you usually panning differnet instruments/sounds in your mixes?

Any tricks on creating space in the middle for the vox?

[vital]

u dont need a space if the vox is recorded and mixed corectly, just listen and experiment, thats how the biggest records come up...
there are even a lot of garbige mixes that people like...
its music man, this is not science!!!

[Lawrence]

u dont need a space if the vox is recorded and mixed corectly, just listen and experiment, thats how the biggest records come up...

I have to disagree with that comment. Not about how the biggest records are made (it depends on what genre I guess) but part of "mixing correctly" IS creating space for things like vocals. Depending on the arrangement and/or instruments you often have to deal with masking and things like that. The best mixing engineers can create beautiful realistic sounding spaces from multiple dry recorded tracks. Granted hip-hop shouldn't be "beautiful" but you still wanna hear every word and maybe have a small sense of space around the main vocal.

Capturing early reflections of vocals during recording allows an individual track to bring a slight sense of it's own space with it but you need a really good sounding room to do it to right. Many home studios with marginal rooms (like mine) don't have that luxury so it has to be artificially created during the mix. Using something like a Blumlein pair to mic a vocal doesn't do much good if the room sound sucks.

One way to make a vocal sit in it's own space is to use (insert) a really good (hi quality), really short (0.3?) reverb with just the right amount of short pre-delay. If you do it right nobody will even be able to tell it has reverb on it. It'll just sit nicely in it's own space and sound "natural". For hip-hop you'd probably stop there. Lexicon MPX1 ambience programs are great for that.

For R&B or other styles you also might wanna send to a couple of mono delays and a longer stereo verb. They all combine to create the illusion of space to the listener.

there are even a lot of garbige mixes that people like... its music man, this is not science!!!

Sorry but mixing music actually is part science. Understanding the science of how the human ear perceives sound is certainly very, very hepful during mixing. Ask any engineer who's taken formal study how much science was involved in their early training. Hearing, dither, voltage, acoustics, polarity, magnetism, bias, etc., etc, etc. The list goes on and on. All of those things can affect a mix. Many of the good habits untrained engineers learn and practice from boards like this are based in science. In the Internet age many "do" these things (often with very good results) without really understanding "why". Understanding "why" is the foundation of good engineering skills. That's where the science is... in the "why".

How does engineer X set his delays a certain way and get a great sound in about 2 minutes? Because he understands some of the science of how sound travels though different kinds and sizes of rooms. A great mix engineer can put you in an imaginary room with a 20ft curved ceiling. Having heard a real one doesn't hurt though.

There's a lot of science involved behind the scenes in mixing. You may not see it, hear about it or notice it because it's all in the mix engineers brain. The science silently supports the emotional & musical parts of mixing. If you ask a great mix engineer "why" enough times you'll start to hear some of it trickle out.

For some strange unknown reason many people just don't think of audio engineers as real "engineers" in the conventional sense. Not like a mechanical or electrical engineer.

It's just music right?

Lawrence

[Barznbeats1]