How to Pan Your Way to Better Mixes

panning and doubling no come on hey Joe from home hey Joe Gilder here from home studio corner today is a Joe Gilder here from home studio corner we're talking about production this week if you haven't seen the last video go check it out I talked through several different ideas for how to produce your music and get better mixes as a result in this video we're gonna focus on panning specifically how to use panning to your advantage during the recording and production process whenever I'm recording a song I am constantly thinking about panning panning isn't just a mixing decision arguably it is more of a recording and production decision than it is a mixing decision when I record something I'm thinking what bucket is this gonna go into is it gonna go on the left bucket the middle bucket or the right bucket those are my three options as far as panning where they're gonna go this isn't a treatise on LCR panning I'm talking about in general there are only three places something can go somewhere up the middle somewhere to the left somewhere to the right and that's what I'm thinking about when I'm recording why because you need things to be balanced I talked about in the last video how cool it can be to take a guitar part that you like record it again and then pan them left and right that can create a big full sound it can be really great for a lot of different types of songs and it remains balanced there's the same thing on the left on the right so that you don't have this lopsidedness to your mix but sometimes you don't want to double something or sometimes you come up with a part that really it doesn't make sense to double but it also doesn't make sense to put it up the middle you do want it off to the side in those cases you have to think of what's gonna go on the other side to balance that out this is especially true on songs that are more sparse and don't have just a huge amounts of things happening it becomes even more important to make sure that a you don't have everything wrapped the middle so the song sounds mono and B you don't have too many things on one side versus the other there needs to be a sense of balance there for an example of this we're gonna look at a song from my upcoming EP this is a laid-back piano ballad it does have drums and bass I'll mute those here at the beginning so you can hear what's happening with the rest of the instruments initially I recorded piano liked that new I wanted some sort of a soft organ sound underneath so I recorded that both of those in my mind are middle things even though they're stereo tracks I'm panning them straight up the middle and not to the left of the right take a listen [Music] sounds nice sounds lovely could just leave it with fat drums and bass but what's the problem well it's really mono even though there's some stereo sounds there's nothing living over to the left or living over to the right I knew I wanted more not huge production but I wanted something tickling my ear on the left and also on the right so the first thing I reached for since I'm really just an acoustic guitar guy was an acoustic guitar and decided to record something very simple finger style and I knew that was gonna be on one of the sides so I put it over to the left [Music] as soon as I was done recording and I said yeah I like that that I knew next task is to figure out okay this one's over here what's gonna go over here another acoustic playing that same part maybe but no it needs to be something more subtle so I decided to go for some sort of electric piano sound you may think you already have piano why would you do another keyboard part because you can and it sounds really cool so I went for kind of a Wurlitzer sort of sound playing not the exact same thing as the piano playing some little melodies and little rhythms that are a little bit different from the piano but then panning that all the way to the right balance is off of the acoustic and also gives us an extra texture that makes the song a little more interesting [Music] so at this point we have four tracks we've got piano and organ up the middle we've got guitar on the left and we've got Wurlitzer early on the right the final thing I knew I wanted was some sort of a lead guitar not like Ripon medium Eataly Joe Satriani lead guitar but something just subtle also finger style but playing chords and then a few little riffs here and there and for me anytime it's kind of a lead guitar probably I'd say seventy percent of the time I'm gonna opt to put that up the middle because it that just makes more sense to me lead vocal goes up the middle lead guitar goes up the middle as well and that works for us because that means I don't have to come up with something else to balance that lead guitar because it's gonna be right at the middle so everything is kind of nice and balanced guitar and whirly piano and organ lead guitar on top of that [Music] so we haven't over produced it we haven't put in so much stuff that it sounds busy it still maintains a lot of that kind of openness that I was wanting in the song but now we've got several things I mean you listen to it and you think that's cool you don't quite realize there's so many things happening but we've got we've got five tracks just there that are really filling out the production of the song now let's listen to it in context with drums bass involved [Music] singing [Music] the truth [Music] you are fearfully and wonderfully [Music] you are fearfully [Music] so let's shift gears a little bit another song on the EP it's a bigger song it's the title track for the album called on men and on this one the second verse is the first half of the second verse it's kind of the pivotal moment of the entire EP and I wanted to make an impact so it says some stuff during the first and then I want the verse to end with this big who I am you can see yeah you can see in the session there's a marker called Wham that's where I wanted to hit really hard so I produced it in such a way to make that happen we've got drums go down from kind of full kit down to playing something on the Tom's guitars drop down to like a palm mute thing and bass was kind of playing as Jim good junga junga junga really really cool and then they hit really hard on that lamb part and start playing more full so here's what it sounded like I did what I talked about in the last video I doubled the guitars played essentially the same thing twice and it was sounding pretty good to me and here's what it sounded like [Music] [Music] so you can hear it already it already does that it gets it small then it swells and gets big and I loved it but there was something there about it that I wasn't quite liking it felt like the guitars weren't getting big enough it felt already a little too big for the verse and then when it slammed it just didn't jump from small to big and I like those small to big jumps so here's what I did I took one of the would one of the doubled guitars and I muted it and then I took the other one and I automated the panning to come up the middle so for this whole verse section instead of stereo guitars it's mono guitar mono Bass up the middle and drums which are kind of mostly mono for this section maybe and I even brought that tom to the middle so everything's up the middle for this section and then on the big wham part they split back out the stereo and it makes you feel like the verse has sucked you into the middle everything's kind of simple and you know chill out here in the middle and then we jump out to the strip the whole desk we jump out to the sides and it just has even more impact than it did just then let me play that for you [Music] [Music] [Music] now is it the guitar going from mono to stereo that makes that section no it's mostly the drums and the hugeness of the arrangement but that little change does make a little bit more of an impact and those are the kind of things you can do take a section if you're having a hard time getting with a section to go from feeling kind of big to feeling really big at the chorus or at the next section of the song try making the prior section more mono and then make it jump out the stereo once you get to the next section it's a great way to add impact and it's fairly subtle but it works okay those are some more ideas to add to your production tool belt remember mixing is great but only if you've produced really great tracks that already sound great if you haven't checked out my brand new production checklist go check it out it's super cool it'll help you ask yourself the right questions to make sure your productions are moving in the right direction go to home studio corner comm slash checklist to get that for free thanks for watching I'll see you in the next one more obsessed with being loving being right who will rather hold your hand and pick a fight [Music]

Channel: Joe Gilder • Home Studio Corner

Views: 26,953

Keywords: mixing, gear, home recording, equipment, joe gilder, presonus, studio one, home studio

Id: Qh7HSoKicYk

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019