How to pan an accoustic "live" song with 2 vocal lines and 2 guitar lines?

[whitedamp]

I´ve this friend who plays accoustic gigs on pubs with his pal and needs a demo to get some jobs. For this demo they are looking for a very "live feeling", with only two vocal tracks, no overdubs or layering on instrumentals, etc. I recorded them as a favour. It was very quick and unpainful, but now I´m having trouble deciding how to pan the tracks. It has only 4 tracks:

a lead vocal (ok, this one go straight to the center of the pan)

a "not-so" backing vocal (sometimes it does that "oooo ahhh" backing thing for the lead, but sometimes it´s actually a second voice, singing different things at the same time of the lead vocal. it´s not omnipresent.)

a rhythm accoustic guitar (I doubletracked this, just in case...)

a "lead" accoustic guitar (it´s just some clean notes. slow arpegios... that shit. it´s a very silent track).


I find that hard pan the rhythm and the lead guitar doesn´t work very well, as the rhythm guitar is much fuller and has some beat on the strumming that just makes the mix uneven if panned too hard for one side. I asked the guy to doubletrack the rhythm guitar just in case, but I think that use them both will lose a bit of the "liveness" of the song... and the problem of where to pan the lead guitar would still remains.

I really have no idea of where to set the second voice too, I was thinking in throw a heavy reverb on it and pan it to the center but I´m afraid of overloading the center of the mix as the lead vocals will be there as well.
Damn, I thought this mix would be so easy. :zombie:
Any advice?

 

[smy1]

Hey Co,

I can see your problems and this is what I would do:

Lead Vocals: put them into the center, set up two FX returns with a Chorus effect on each, set to a "light" setting. Pan the FX returns hard L and hard R. Now send a decent amount of the lead vocals to each of the two Chorus FX sends and you got a very upfront and very wide lead vocal. Maybe EQ out the lows and superhigh frequencies on the FX returns if you feel like it. Put a a subtle reverb on the center vocals and pan it center also. You could also stick different reverbs on each of the L/R chorus FX returns to set the back into the mix a bit more.

Background vocals: put them R30 and set up an FX return with a Delay. Set that delay to a really short delay time like 10-30ms and pan the Delay return L30 (mess with the left/right positions a bit, maybe more extreme or closer in may sound good). Make sure the level on the return is the sam as the level on the BG Vocal channel, so that the signal is even.
Set up 2 reverbs that are different from the leadvocal reverb and send the L30 and R30 track there. Pan these reverbs L30 and R30, too.

Rhythm guitar: put it L50 and set up an FX return with a very light Chorus which you pan R50. Make sure you get the same level on the FX return that you have on the rhythm guitar channel. Set up two reverbs that you pan L50 and R50 and send each of the channels to one of the reverbs.

Lead Guitar: same as rhythm guitar, just use a short delay instead of a chorus and pan it L20 and R20.

That way your mix will look like this in the stereo spectrum:

Hard L: Lead Vocals Chorus Return > Reverb A panned hard L
L50: Rhythm Guitar Original > Reverb B panned L50
L30: Background Vocal Delay Return > Reverb C panned L30
L20: Lead Guitar Delay Return > Reverb C panned L30 (same Reverb as BG Vocals!)
C: Lead Vocals > Reverb D panned center
R20: Lead Guitar Original > Reverb E panned R20
R30: Background Vocals Original > Reverb E panned R30 (same Reverb as Lead Guitar!)
R50: Rhythm Guitar Chorus Return > Reverb F panned R50
Hard R: Lead Vocals Chorus Return > Reverb G panned hard R

Make sure you use different room settings on all the reverbs, from small to large rooms. Solo each track and listen to the reverb tail. Raise the reverb so you can clearly hear it and then back it down so you can just barely hear it while soloing the channel.

In the end, put a convolution reverb on the 2bus and set it to a club or bar impulse. Put lots of verb on, so you can hear it clearly and then pull the reverb back until you can barely hear it at all.

Doing it like this should give you a very full, wide and even sounding mix. Don't forget to put the vocals up-front ...

Hope this helps.

 

[smy1]

Oh, btw, the method above is very good for "pop" sounding mixes. It might not sound as "live" though.

A more unusual, but very "live", panning would be to pan the instruments where the players are.

If the lead singer is also the lead guitarist and the background vocalist is the rhythm player, then pan it like this:

L40: lead vocals and lead guitar
R40: bg vocals and rhythm guitar

Put a small room verb on the right player, to make him audibly sit back a bit.

Then put a nice and realistic room reverb (impulse?) on the whole thing and you got a very "bar/club" sounding tape, where the listener will think that he/she is sitting in front of the stage.

 

[whitedamp]

Man, that was an absolutelly complete answer. Thank you so much for your patience.

As you´ve said, it will lose some liveness, but I´m 100% sure that it will sound much better. As the objective of this demo is to reproduce their gig I will probably do your second suggestion, but I totally saved the info of the first suggestion and will try it later on other songs in the future. I have no practice on "fattening" mono sources with controlled delay and reverb to make´em wider and you gave me a very nice starting point. Thanks again!

I know it´s a shame to bash my own "clients" (it´s a favour) but believe me, this song doesn´t worth it. That´s why I didn´t even uploaded a preview of the mp3 uke:

 

[colonel kurtz]

i didn't read the advice anyone else gave, but i'd probably do the following...in a nutshell:

pan the rythym guitars L/R...maybe halfway
keep the lead down the middle
lead vox down the middle
backup vox down the middle, w/ a wide chorus to fill up some of the stereo spectrum

 

[Gnash]

Yeah you can really make a "big" sounding mix with those tracks. To keep the rythym acoustic tracks from getting out of control, I get a pretty bitchin' mix with just the one guitar. I, clone it, keep the original dry one center. Put a L/R delay on the clone, and a very slight (slapback) delay will start to give you a big guitar sound. Use 2, or 3 clones and jack around with putting those out to the left and right, with longer, crazier delays. You'll fill up that space in the stereo field, while keeping the focus in the middle. It's easy to get a "big" mix, when you only have a couple tracks, and no drums. Chourus seems too "final" for me, I dig delays for this shit.