how do you pan in rock mixes?

[matttech]

just interested in how other people tend to work with panning in rock/ metal (and even pop) mixes with live drums. i seem to be slipping into a pattern of working that stays the same every time, which is the following:

kick/snare - centre
hats - matching position in overheads (eg: to the left slightly)
overheads - panned hard l&r
guitars - panned hard l&r
bass - centre
doubled vocals - panned hard l&r

sometimes i bring the vocals (or guitars ) in a bit from the sides, or have a mono vocal in verses, then stereo backing vox coming in during the choruses. if there is a third guitar (or solo) that tends to sit in the middle, as do keys (unless they are in stereo).

i am aware that i am a fiend for stereo, but it just sounds better to me. the only problem comes if you are stood next to one speaker. i am aware that mixes for clubs need to be more mono for this very reason. this is only a summary of my mixes, and obviously each one varies when required (use of simulated stereo effects rather than double tracking etc.., use of panned mono reverbs etc..)

ALSO: how much reverb do you alll use? i seem to be using less and less as the years go by. a lot of the time i may go for a short plate on the snare, and maybe a doubler/ short plate on vocals, relying on overhead ambience for the rest of the drums. if i DO use any on guitars i tend to try a spring/ amp reverb on one side of the panned guitars only.....to achieve more obvious spread and realism. it has to be said that i suffer fom tinnitus through years of work which means that my ears get tired easily...resulting in a loss of depth perception. this may account for the extreme measures i take to achieve separation in my mixes (lack of reverb, extreme stereo). the thing is, the clarity i get always impresses people, and compares very favourably with many commercial recordings.

so....how do YOU pan? do you use hard panning? do you always use stereo overheads, hard panned?

[Stevedresser83]

Depends on the style of rock but sometimes I like the drums a little more centered and also depends on the nature of the overheads and how clear they are. Sometimes panned approx 70 LR. I like mono room mics to. Sometimes I'll pan Hat and Ride approx 30 but then but a short soft room verb panned hard 100 opposite side. I usually do this when the drum sound is more sampled for hard rock. I almost never only do 2 vocals hard L R usually 3 vocals for chorus sometimes 4, 2 different mic's up mid and then hard LR. Keys and ambience and FX i usually find a spot not hard left or right and not up the middle for it to sit. Main gtrs hard L R. Layers / Leads somewhere in between. BG's can be anywhere. I'm a big fan of a 2,3 or even 4 very suttle reverbs on the snare for rock drums. Short Gate, Bit fat room verb, Short Plate, sometimes another Long Gate or something else that makes it big. I tend to do that with heavier rock or more ballad type pop. For work when I mix stuff for TV or movies nearly everything is doubled and hard L and R and solo or breakdown gtr is mono and hat ride is center (this is still rock music which is what we do).

[doorknocker]

I read that Chris Lord-Alge only pans either dead centre or hard L or R. Personally, that's something I totally avoid. I will pan guitars L+R but never 100%, same with OHs.

I get my basic panning scheme while monitoring thru a single Avantone in MONO. Something I read in 'Behind the glass', I think it was Don Smith that mentioned it. It really helps with seperation and having the track in question come thru without just making it louder and possibly clouding up otehr elements of the mix.

But then there's the creative side of panning as well and I really like movement in a mix with say spreading out the drums more on the chorus for example or having guitar fills 'flying by' if appropriate.

[matttech]

steve:

interesting. do you have a specific mic for the ride then? not just stereo overheads? i always struggle to get the balance right on overheads (eg: quite often the cymbals will take your head off, but the ride gets a little lost, and the rest of the drumkit - kick snr, toms - is not as loud as i would like) i tend to point the overheads vertically down over the kit, towards the front, about 2ft above it. i move them around until i get the best ride to cymbal ratio i can.

should i bring them back into the room more, and angle them towards the kit from further in front? will this produce a warmer, more balanced sound? the overhead sound i get can also be a little thin sometimes (tend to use rode nt 3s).

any thoughts?

also, do people tend to bother micing up toms much? i have found that i need to eq them so severely when i've tried it that it becomes more hassle than it's worth, so i tend to rely on the overheads for tome (but then they are sometimes hard to balance with the cymbals, and a lot of eq/ compression is required to give them enough ooomph during fills (have found the Eventide Omnipressor to be excellent for bringing out tom resonance...for that ringo starr sound! - using the dynamic reversal feature...easily the craziest compressor i've ever come across....but very hard to control). heavy low/ low midrange eq on the overheads is especially important when the snare/ kick are gated, or the fills sound really weak when compared with the main beats, as you get no spill from the snare/ kick mics on the fills. have also tried micing up the toms from inside the drums themselves (to get more separation - much like you would with a kick drum) and flipping the phase. this worked ok, but i'm not sure this is an "accepted" technique

[Neon Heart]

I often pan kick and snare for accents.

if you put an accentuated kick (that has more beater "click") slightly to the left and the same with the snare to the right they'll jump out nicely and give an impression of the whole thing being alive and moving. just try it.
I hear that on records once in a while, too.

[doorknocker]

Originally Posted by Neon Heart

I often pan kick and snare for accents.

if you put an accentuated kick (that has more beater "click") slightly to the left and the same with the snare to the right they'll jump out nicely and give an impression of the whole thing being alive and moving. just try it.
I hear that on records once in a while, too.

Great idea! Got to try that.

[Stevedresser83]

Originally Posted by Matt Tech

steve:

interesting. do you have a specific mic for the ride then? not just stereo overheads? i always struggle to get the balance right on overheads (eg: quite often the cymbals will take your head off, but the ride gets a little lost, and the rest of the drumkit - kick snr, toms - is not as loud as i would like) i tend to point the overheads vertically down over the kit, towards the front, about 2ft above it. i move them around until i get the best ride to cymbal ratio i can.

Matt honestly I almost never engineer and track drums and it definitely is not my specialty. I mainly write and mix. I know some people close mic all cymbals now which may help in separation but I would still use OH's which is a huge part of the snare, toms, and kick. A SDC should be fine on the ride. When I do track drums and time or budget is not an issue I like to have the drummer do kick snare toms in a take then cymbals in a take (usually for modern rock type music). Lots of tracks afterward as you will have 2 sets of OH's and 2 sets of room mics to mix and be prepared for some drum editing.

[matttech]

Originally Posted by Stevedresser83

Matt honestly I almost never engineer and track drums and it definitely is not my specialty. I mainly write and mix. I know some people close mic all cymbals now which may help in separation but I would still use OH's which is a huge part of the snare, toms, and kick. A SDC should be fine on the ride. When I do track drums and time or budget is not an issue I like to have the drummer do kick snare toms in a take then cymbals in a take (usually for modern rock type music). Lots of tracks afterward as you will have 2 sets of OH's and 2 sets of room mics to mix and be prepared for some drum editing.

a separate track for cymbals eh? not a bad idea...would gget much better separation. i presume they would have to know exactly where the cymbals appear beforehand otherwise you would end up with "impossible" sections where the hihats are being played at the same time as the cymbals. could work, but i guess the hard bit would be fills where the odd hit drops out. i have recently sampled up the whole kit at work with close and ambient mics and used the results for programming all my recent rock-based sequenced material - sounds ace, but takes a long time to sample & organise. when programming fills i have to really think about how a drummer would play it and drop out the relevant drums when cymbals come in.

[mr. torture]

Originally Posted by Matt Tech

doubled vocals - panned hard l&r

Really? Every rock vocal I have heard is up the middle?

[matttech]

Originally Posted by mr. torture

Really? Every rock vocal I have heard is up the middle?

every one? not sure about that. but either way, often they have some sort of faux-stereo processing to spread them out a bit. i personally am not a massive fan of this approach as it tends to sound like a chorus a lot of the time. some of the better effects (eventide, lexicon) do it a bit better, with minimal modulation artifacts, but i still like the big sound you get with stereo vocals (although ideally, it's better to have mono in verses, then stereo coming in at choruses....but often that's not what you get given). another alternative is to haveone vocal in verses, then the second one only coming in for choruses, but with a stereo effect on. i must admit i'm a bit of a fan of extreme stereo for various reasons...even to the point of liking the old techniques used in the 60's (eg: beatles) where even the drums and bass are panned to the sides - although obviously you can't really pile on the bass with this technique as it becomes very distracting. i believe that technique was as a result of the technical limitations of the time (eg: working wwith 4 tracks/ bouncing down a lot). but i kind of like it

[Iggy Poop]

Originally Posted by Matt Tech

just interested in how other people tend to work with panning in rock/ metal (and even pop) mixes with live drums. i seem to be slipping into a pattern of working that stays the same every time, which is the following:

kick/snare - centre
hats - matching position in overheads (eg: to the left slightly)
overheads - panned hard l&r
guitars - panned hard l&r
bass - centre
doubled vocals - panned hard l&r

If you're panning gtrs, overheads, and vocals all hard l&r then they would be competing for the same spot in the mix. Especially gtrs which can share some of the same frequencies.Try vocals straight up the middle, they should be the heard the most up front in the mix.