LCR Panning

[schust]

A friend mentioned LCR panning to me the other day. Didn't know what it was, so checked out this vid. Curious what other people think about it. I don't think it makes sense to me for a couple reasons, but curious what other people think.


Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDp8rsdmdEE

 

[Sloan]

I've always liked having things 'in between' so it's never really worked for me.

 

[wishtheend]

Not my style, but one of my favorite albums Mechanical Animals by Marilyn Manson is mixed that way. Think it was TLA on that one.

 

[Random3]

I understand the concept and I get why it would work in some cases, but I can't imagine using it on anything but the most simple mixes.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

"Get everything out of the way of the vocals" makes sense if you're making extremely vocal-centric music, but that isn't really the case with metal. Interesting idea though.

 

[egan.]

When this technique first came en vogue I tried it and didn't care for it as a hard fast rule. For one thing any stereo mics are going to place things between the sides and center. What I took from it though is to ask myself whether I really wanted something halfway to the left or if it was just a bet hedge.

 

[schust]

What I took from it though is to ask myself whether I really wanted something halfway to the left of if it was just a bet hedge.

Yea, me too. Made me start questioning things. Not always a bad thing. But I'm still not convinced it's the way to go.

 

[JeffTD]

I pretty much stick to this but not out of adherence to a rule, my workflow just drifted towards that. Anything doubled (rhythm gtrs, melody/harmony/overdub gtrs, bg vox, acoustic gtrs, etc) gets a hard left/right, OH/stereo room tracks hard l/r, ld vox/kick/snr center. The only tracks I go in-between for are non-constants; toms, cymbal spots, one-off lead parts, certain vocal parts, etc.

 

[LeSedna]

I tend to naturally do that as well. Either a track is stereo, and then I don't even think of restricting its panning (if I had pan knobs like in PT maybe I would think of it, but I don't usually have that option in front of my eyes), or is mono, and it's either center or hard panned.

I would just maybe use quad track guitars (the secondary tracks) to 90%, or harmony vocals if they are more than 2. Some solo, artistic and creative ideas would get moderate panning, or extra tracks which are not the foundation of the mix, like a melody on acoustic guitar which is only a support to the chorus melody, things like that.

All the rest, always hard panned. Like, a single stereo pad synth would be centered, a couple of different pad synths would be 100% hard panned for maximum stereo image. The few stereo tracks would take care of the "in between" panning. Like overheads, the different drums would create enough moderate panned content for my ears and the spot mics would be placed accordingly.

I don't know if that is good or not, I just naturally went that way !

A thing I like not hard panned, is when there are two solists, either two guitars, or say Children of Bodom types of leads with guitars vs synth. I would usually pan a solist left 20/30% maximum, and the other one Right. For some reason, I always put myself left when I have a choice and I think it is because my left ear is more analytical than the right one and when i focus on a sound, I listen with my left ear a little bit better !

 

[A Gruesome Discovery]

Not my style, but one of my favorite albums Mechanical Animals by Marilyn Manson is mixed that way. Think it was TLA on that one.

Are you sure about this one? I love that record but this comes as a surprise to me.
...Well, except on the track "Fundamentally Loathsome", which has that early 1960's vocals on one side, drums on the other thing going on.

 

[greyskull]

I tend to mix that way; but now I'm thinking I shouldn't!

 

[bryan_kilco]

Not my style, but one of my favorite albums Mechanical Animals by Marilyn Manson is mixed that way. Think it was TLA on that one.

Sooooo fucking weird. I haven't heard anything about that album for yeaaaaars and just last night I had a few tracks stuck in my head and now this morning you guys brought it up. Creepy.

I sort of mix this way as well. Everything is panned except kick/snare/bass/main vox and maybe synths/strings.

 

[wishtheend]

Are you sure about this one? I love that record but this comes as a surprise to me.
...Well, except on the track "Fundamentally Loathsome", which has that early 1960's vocals on one side, drums on the other thing going on.

Yeah, first time I heard about LCR was an interview with Tom Lord Alge about mixing Mechanical Animals. I think all the synth has various spreads but I bet that just comes from the source synths. It may not be 100% on the album, but a lot of what I spot checked sounds like it could very well be LCR (Great Big White World, Dope Show).

 

[UncleBob]

I pretty much stick to 100 - 50 - 0 - 50 - 100

 

[Kohugaly]

I tried this approach when the video came out. I was mixing a symphonic metal song and the result was terrible. The orchestra (from keyboard) sounded very irritating and unnatural when individual instruments were hard panned. I tried to EQ the shit out of it and automate volume, but it didn't help. I had to redo the mix. It literally worked only in one part of the song, where I've put bass and vocal in the middle, piano on left and flute/oboe on right and the delay ended up being panned around 50%left.

LCR panning works good for vocal oriented music, but not that good for metal, which is very instrument oriented (the song I've mixed was over 8min long and had like a 2min of singing in total). I pretty much hard-pan only guitars, because IMO they should be the widest element and the rest of the mix should fit in between them. When something is more to the side then the edge of the guitars, it breaks the wall of sound and makes guitars sound narrow.

Panning channels of stereo tracks (the Pro-Tools style) is counter-intuitive to me - panning the channels 50% inwards is essentially the same thing as using stereo-widener to narrow the stereo image by 50%. Using stereo-wideners/shapers (like waves stereo imager for example) to position stereo track (by widening/narrowing + rotating) is more flexible, intuitive and often sounds more natural than panning. Off course, all of this are just my opinions and it's also very context-dependent. Graham improved his mix a lot using LCR panning. I broke it. Why? Because it doesn't work on every mix.

 

[rapucore]

I pretty much stick to 100 - 50 - 0 - 50 - 100

This.

Though I strive to go for 100 - 50 - 0 - 50 - 100 to get the most separation. Most of the things panned 50% are lead guitar work, backup vox and keyboards.

 

[frazzlepuff]

Pretty much always mix like this. I'm an all or nothing kind of guy and I like an extreme stereo field. Don't be scared of it! Occasionally there'll be something that needs to be a bit more in between e.g. an orchestral element. It pains me greatly to make exceptions to the rule though.

 

[xTomx]

Pan it wherever sounds good, these arbitrary rules are dumb.

 

[ze kink]

I pretty much do all LCR too. I don't follow it as a rule anymore, even though I tried that too, being influenced by Nigel Godrich a lot at one point. "Non-constants" is a good description for the stuff I don't hard pan, such as the occasional lead, toms (though I do hard pan those occasionally if there's only two) and so on.

 

[jeid]

I go LCR for most things. I have bits and pieces in between though.