Do you pan your mixes from the player's perspective?

[Taylor Livingston]

I was just listening to some Tori Amos (yeah, sowhatwannafightaboutit? ) and she's playing harpsichord, and, as is usual for piano and harpsichord, the bass side of the instrument is panned a bit to one side, and the treble end is panned to the other. Personally, I don't object to this, although sometimes it's really exaggerated.

Here's what annoyed me: the bass side was on the right! Of course, on a real harpsichord or piano the bass strings are on the player's left side. Having it backwards was kind of disorienting to me, so I switched my headphones around.

I suspect that this is not a concern to anyone who doesn't play music (and possibly a lot of people who do), but to me it seems so natural to pan things the way they would be heard by the player (even if the end result is more extreme than the player would actually hear). When I'm mixing a drumkit, even if it's one that's assembled out of samples, I mentally assemble the kit, putting my ride a bit to the right, the snare a bit to the left. If ever used toms, they would start on the left and move right as they descended in pitch. In any case, I would never be able to bring myself to put the bass side of a piano on the right, no matter how abrasive I was trying to be.

What do you think? Is this how you mix? Am I crazy?

 

[skidrawk]

I put bass, vocals, drums and sometimes rythm guitars near center most the time. I pan melody and synchopation tracks (whether they be keys, bass, lead guitar, backup vocals, etc.) out to the sides.

 

[Edwcdc]

When I mix drums, I mostly go from a right handed drummers perspective. I have heard plenty of mixes go either way so I guess it's a matter of taste.
I prefer to do it this way because it gives me a good reference for the rest of the mix. As far as guitars, bass keys and vocals go, I just try to keep a balance. Vocals, bass, kick, and snare mostly in the middle and everything else gets spread around.

 

[DocBop]

I think this is one of those "It Depends" questions. Some like to pan from the audience prespective. I personally don't like overdoing wide paning. Like like drums in stereo but note too wide. Being old-school and there was media issue with bass, so I still put bass in the center. It I was doing a full band I might put a keyboard from middle to one side. In piano solo or duet I might spread wide depending mic's and if mic's were spead over mutiple tracks.. Sometimes if an intrument is to one side I will make their reverb/echo return to the other side. So every recording is different no one answer.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

There are no rules. What sounds best to you is what counts.
The old Beatles recordings used to bug me with all the drums panned hard to one side or the other. It's an interesting effect but not how I'd like to hear drums.
Why not spice it up, try mixing opposite of your normal technique, you might be surprised how it sounds. I think it really changes the mix depending on what everything else is doing in stereo.
Dirk

 

[lemur821]

I figure the only people who will even catch on are those who play the instrument in question, so it makes sense to use a player's ear... view?

 

[Taylor Livingston]

These are all good points, folks. Just ran across this:

http://www.lefthandedpiano.co.uk/

I definitely agree that people tend to overdo panning in general. I like a spacious sound, but sometimes people go overboard and put everything at a different point in space, with some things panned hard to one side, which I really dislike. Also, people try to "stereo-ize" mono sounds by flipping the phase on one channel. Used sparingly, this can be okay, but it kind of hurts my brain if used too much.

 

[bluestarbass]

Panning is something of an art in itself. Chris Lord Algae Claims he hard pans everything. I pan everything from the listeners perspective, not the player. I guess I had just done that intuitively, I'll have to try it the other way on my next mix.

 

[gnergaard]

IN general I don't think panning bass or bass drum is a good idea.
As far as the audience or player's perspective the point is almost lost as sounds that are low frequency are nearly omnidirectional.
From an engineering perspective I think that center paning for low frequency is just a smart idea- you need both speakers to produce the powerfull, watt-consuming low frequencies. Of course doing something for an effect, or a bass tone that is thin or a line that is higher pitched are exceptions, but in general low end needs as much speaker as it can get.
Of course, this is for the stereo world. I don't know anything about mixing in 5.1 and if you are mixing strictly for playback on systems with a dedicated subwoofer maybe the above opinion isn't quite as valid. But for most of the ways that people listen to music it just makes more sense to leave low end instruments and material centered., IMHO.

 

[markjazzbassist]

yeah i pan from the perspective of the audience. so drum middle, keys left, and bass right. yeah baby, panning

 

[Dave Martin]

Typically, I'll pan the drums from the drummers perspective, but I don't over/exaggerate any other instruments. Other instruments may well be placed hard left or right (or anywhere else in the stereo field), but I don't usually worry about how my panning relates to the way a group might set up on stage (though sometimes, I do that, too).

My guess is that the harpsichord part that you heard might have been a synth/sampler, since it's fairly tough to get a really exaggerated lo/hi spread on a real harpsichord.

 

[Taylor Livingston]

...but I don't usually worry about how my panning relates to the way a group might set up on stage...

Yeah, that's not so much what I was talking about, especially since there's no standard (AFAIK) about what side of the stage certain instruments should be placed. I was only talking about instruments that have directional sound sources like piano and drums.

Now that I"m thinking about it, I imagine on cross-strung pianos, where the bass strings run over the treble strings, people must be really going out of their way to get this stereo effect, since it's probably very subtle if there at all on the real instrument (my experience playing a real grand piano has been minimal, and I've never recorded one, so I'm just speculating here).

 

[bearfoot]

But then I suppose since you're hearing her vocal more or less straight on, and she tends to sing and play keyboard simultaneously, then the bass side of the harpsichord would be on the right.

 

[Taylor Livingston]

Well, yeah, if I were standing in front of the harpsichord. So that's my point, panning the instrument from the perspective of a spectator or the musician. Personally I prefer the latter.

 

[Aaron]

IN general I don't think panning bass or bass drum is a good idea.
As far as the audience or player's perspective the point is almost lost as sounds that are low frequency are nearly omnidirectional.
From an engineering perspective I think that center paning for low frequency is just a smart idea- you need both speakers to produce the powerfull, watt-consuming low frequencies. Of course doing something for an effect, or a bass tone that is thin or a line that is higher pitched are exceptions, but in general low end needs as much speaker as it can get.

I dig a lot of recordings where the bass is panned, because you barely ever hear the bass anywhere except center.

Tchad Blake pans out bass on a number of records. Soul Coughing and The Bad Plus albums come to mind.

For trios, I feel that panning out the bass (opposite of the piano/guitar/melodic instrument/etc.) really opens up the space.

 

[these_go211]

i'm with dirk diggler here, no rules man! the old doors records had very unusual panning, van halen records had hard panned bass to one side and guitars and the others. another is the who live at leeds! i think it's fun to try new things with respect to panning. it can give your songs a whole new perspective. to be cliche, "think outside the box."

 

[geoffkhan]

the bass side of the instrument is panned a bit to one side, and the treble end is panned to the other. Personally, I don't object to this, although sometimes it's really exaggerated.

Here's what annoyed me: the bass side was on the right! Of course, on a real harpsichord or piano the bass strings are on the player's left side. Having it backwards was kind of disorienting to me, so I switched my headphones around.

When mixing pianos or other keyboard instruments, it's important not to exaggerate the width of the instrument, as you mentioned. This is something I believe the synthesizer has to blame--sound designers probably believing pianists wanted to hear the high notes panned to the right and low ones to the left.

So when I mix I pan the two mics apart just a bit to get stereo width, but not so much that it sounds like one giant piano.

When I'm mixing a drumkit, even if it's one that's assembled out of samples, I mentally assemble the kit, putting my ride a bit to the right, the snare a bit to the left. If ever used toms, they would start on the left and move right as they descended in pitch.

That would be from the player's perspective. I just listened to a CD that was mixed that way, and it was pretty disconcerting to hear the low tom on that side. I guess I've been conditioned, like any other non-drummer to hear things from that perspective. Even mixes with the hihat to the left can sometimes sound strange. I know the hihat thing is pretty controversial, and usually drummer-engineers will put it on the left, too.

But then again, the piano is usually mixed from the player's perspective, as if the pianist had his back to the audience.

While I prefer panning things as they sound from an audience's perspective, there are certain conventions as to whether an instrument is panned from the player's perspective or the audience's.