Some tips on Good Panning please

[blayz2002]

Hi,

At the mo all of my musical elements are from midi sound modules. Primarily a JV2080.

I like to use a lot of piano's, accoustic guitars, strings and horns. Some of these sounds in the 2080 are in stereo and some in mono. When recording these am I better off recording them as they are i.e. stereo in stereo and mono in mono.

Or is it better for instance to record piano's in stereo?

What about accoustic guitar (say it's the lead rythmic sound), any good tips here? Is it a good idea to record two mono takes and the pan them medium to hard left and right?

What I'm currently doing is trying to imagine how these may have been recorded in say the 70's and try to simulate that.

Also any other good tips for processing / mixing midi versions of these?

Thanks in advance

[nukmusic]

well...there no one answer to your question. It would depend on several things about the feel, groove, instrumentation of the song, how you want the final mix, etc etc. Practice makes progress

If its a song where the piano dominates...then yes..recording it stereo will most likely sound better. or if you have programmed a string arrangement ...

but if it a small background part that only plays on certain parts of the song...mono may be better in that case.

some folks like every thing recorded to mono tracks....because it gives them more panning options(in their own opinion) I myself mix and match stuff

you can always get some CD's and a pair of good headphones, then listen to how things were mixed and see where the placements are.
ex.
this gtr is here and this gtr is here, but softer and has an echo(slap delay)....this horn is on the left and has a lot of reverb

[streetbeats]

I dont know if this is applicable to the particular sounds that you're talking about, but beware that many 'stereo synths' are really outputting a 'pseudo stereo', with one chanel merely a copy of the other but effected in some minor way.

If you have a few of these pseudo stereo sources, then panning hard L and R can be a bad thing, reducing depth and definition

As with nuk I think the mix and match approach works best for me. Sometimes Ill throw away one side of a stereo patch, and maybe recreate my own stereo with a delay or something but pan somewhere inside the extremes.

[Big 3rd]

It's good to have both. But even the main riff within the song doesn't have to be in stereo. A lot of the overall stereo quality of a song that's mixed well has great contrasts between the mono sounds and stereo sounds.

Mono riffs can bring more focus and stereo riffs can bring more drama and fullness.

Give us a track to hear and I'll tell you what I would make mono and what I'd keep stereo.

[Samplecraze]

Stereo and mono are differentiated only when one channel carries different information to the other, or when an effect is used that may evolve over the axis.

I mix in mono and find I can get far better placement results, and when I need to produce and polish the mix I flip to stereo and check all the phases.

You tend to find, as someone has mentioned, that module presets carry faux panning and that you are far better off using that particular channel in stereo unless an effect is used or the above is applied.

Pianos and certain acoustic sounds will be spanned across the keys and panned, so using a piano sound in stereo is more workable than in mono as you tend to find that the lower keays span one way all the way to the higher keys which start spanning the other way.

Finally, and the most important factor, is how the presets have been created. If they are waveform up, then mono is all you need unless they are layered and panned for width (as in some pad sounds). If they have been sampled and miced then that's a different ball game.

[SW-Vet]

What do u guys think is best when recording vocals? to record in stereo or mono? I have just got into a habit of recording all vox in mono, do u think I am taking away from my vocals by doing this?

[STARSKI]

people don't generally "record" vocals in stereo. you can record a take and then record a double overdub of the take and then pan these. but as far as "record" in stereo this is not common.

[MarkusColeman]

@blayz

we have a special guest moderator in here this month, Bruce "The Vi(be)king" Swedien.
ask him, why he always records in stereo.

there is so much more depth to a "stereo recording" (when done properly) than to a mono and mixwise, your mixerman has way more options to play with the ambience and "image".

but yeah, keep in mind, that most of the "stereo" sounds, are panned layers of the same waveform (double-mono) with tons of effects.......which often disappear when monitored in mono, or even mash up your whole "image" by phasing through all frequency ranges and the panorama.

I pan "blindly", read: I do the whole "beat" in mono and start to give the individual elements their room when I´m almost finished.

that way I can hear if a sound will cause problems, while previewing it.
that way you also tend to pan less and pan stuff only, that you want to put an "accent" on (your drum game becomes better......most productions in the pre-mix stage have way too much bass freqs and the "+6dB-snare-syndrom"...cause you don´t hear it in stereo that much).

try it and tell me if it works for you.

[STARSKI]

using panning helps give space in your mix along with volume and eq settings...