Panning and Compression

[ATGuitar_NInja]

Ey,

When I do guitars I've found that panning the guitars helps to allow anything down the middle of the stereo image to breathe easy and sound good. In my limited experience mixing I've tried many panning ideas, for example I would usually do 60/40 basing the panning on a 100% system. Other ideas like this were 90/10 or 80/20 or 70/30...Then I found some more tweaking type stuff that could be done with the volume levels of everytrack. Considering I was doing mostly double tracks with the guitars and drums + bass right down the middle. Adjusting the inner tracks closer to the center of the mix around -6Db and the outer tracks around -3Db. This gave the recordings a full sound in the middle while allowing the drums and bass to stick out. It sounded better than a lot of my pervious mixes anyhow. All this ramblind leads into my question...

What are some common panning things you guys do? Why? And what volume level do you generally set the guitars too at those pannings. Or do you rely on compression to level the signal down to a certain level?

Just wondering...I will continue to experement.

- Chris

 

[Ermz]

Rhythm guitars hard left and hard right.

Each bass drum 5-10% to the side (don't ask why, it just seems more normal to me that way). Snare dead center and the cymbals all over the place. Usually have the crashes panned hard to either side though. Toms set from left to right going highest to lowest or lowest to highest.

Single leads are dead center. Harmonized leads are 50% to each side.

The volume level depends on the average volume of the rest of the track. I normally like the kick and snare to be fairly prominent though. Most of that is EQ work and not pumping the amplitude however.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

You can put anything whereever you want it... but sticking to the norms on drums and rythym guitars is a good idea... hard either side.

You can put leads/key parts wherever in the stereo field they sound good, try it out.

 

[ATGuitar_NInja]

good stuff there...

do you guys usually compress the hell out of the guitars? bass? Drums? If drums what parts of the drums? Snare? Kicks? and again why? Since it's all well and good to mix and get it so that it sounds good but why do something if you don't really need to. I've noticed compressing the kicks between 50 - 200 Hz makes them stand out really well and become quite punchy as opposed to buried in the mix. I'd post some examples of these things but my webserver is down temporarily...(<sp?)

 

[Exsanguis]

I've recently been trying the Tom Lord-Alge approach to compression. Obviously, I start out with basic EQ tweaks and panning to get everything in perspective and give the mix a general shape. But, after that, I basically compress the hell out of everything. I like the approach of using various compressors to get different sounds out of the instruments, but since I use mostly plug-ins, I spend a lot of time fussing with the settings in the plugins as opposed to messing with various pieces of outboard gear. This way, I get the vocals, guitars, bass, and drums really edgy and aggressive(if the song calls for it, of course), and am able to toy with each instrument's attack, and dynamics. In the styles of metal that I work in, individual instruments don't have much dynamics, so I try to fit everything in that way, and provide the track's dynamics during mastering. Of course, this may sound really extreme, and don't think that I always use compression on everything, but this is how I tend to do most mixes.

 

[Ermz]

I usually don't compress unless I need to. It's never been a big part of my mixing unless of course there are issues like a flabby low-end on guitars or even bass drums in which case I'd use a multi-band to tighten up the rogue frequencies.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

I always compress the snare and kick at least.

It's very rare for it to allready have the whip/crack in it that i'd want in a mix.