David wrote:
Hi all,

I was hoping some of you could share your tracking and panning
techniques. What I have found is that it is so tempting to
doubletrack
everything so that it doesn't need to be localized on the stereo
plane
and then you're not stuck with one track which you don't where to
place. This creates a messy mix which I am beginning to hear more of
from top 40 artists.

What I have tried doing is panning a rhythm guitar track hard left
and
adding a stereo delay to the track so as to spread it over to the
other side and in the centre a bit. This leaves room for the vocal
and
room for a different inversion or instrument like piano on the right.
I add stereo delay to this as well to push it to the left and centre.
Overall I like this sound better than leaving the piano stereo and
doubletracking the guitar. As long as they're playing at the same
time
to counteract eachother, especially in the chorus. What I find is
that
the reason why I use delay so much is it makes the hard panned
isntruments work when listening in headphones. Hard panning sounds
weird with no effect to blur it into the stereo field for the other
ear to hear.

You can just doubletrack the guitar and push the volume up on the side
where you want the guitar to reign and down on the other side. I use
this technique and it gives more of a fullness because I record the two
guitar tracks in a slightly different way each time (usually I record
one with the three-way toggle switch on the guitar on rhythm and the
other on lead). Depending on how much bass you like to mix in, I
usually make the rhythm-setting track the higher volume.


Are there other methods of hard panning mono tracks and effecting
them
in a way that allows the other ear to hear them with headphones?
Apart
from reverb obviously? I want to know this because I might not be
doing such a sustained song that needs so much delay, I might be
going
for a more dry sound.

I guess what I would like to know is,

1. Do you tend to doubletrack everything

For differnt reasons. I sometimes double track acoustic guitar and mix
in the second track with the first to give it fullness.

2. If not, then how do you tend to spread single mono tracks around
the stereo field and localize them well enough to tolerate them in
cans/phones. Wigh delay, reverb, something else?
Yeah, why not?

Thanks in advance
Dave.