On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 00:45:26 -0800, 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.

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.

Try taking a little high and low end off one side, but leaving the other
side not eq'd, and pan the track slightly towards the not eq'd side.
You need the stereo eq after the pan pot to do this.

I do this when mostly doubling guitars when I want to keep them both
pretty central and forward, but still not standing on each others feet. I
do the opposite pan/eq on each guitar and it works. It seems to mono ok
too.

Not really what you asked for, but it's worth investigating a combination
of panning+stereo eq sometimes rather than time based effects like
chorus, delay, reverb etc.


I guess what I would like to know is,

1. Do you tend to doubletrack everything 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?

You don't have to double track exactly the same part, if that makes any
sense. Two complimentry parts on the same instrument, both quite simple
and can work better if you want to be able to pan them out. You can even
get the guitarist to play another 'delayed' part that won't clash with the
music in places like real delay does, if they are any good.

Just some ideas.


Thanks in advance
Dave.