Day 4 of this mixing tip marathon has arrived and it’s time to talk about panning. You may be like me and think you already knew everything there was to know about panning in your mix. But until you’ve tried LCR panning, you truly are missing out.
Take Back The Stereo Field
This simple yet powerful mixing tip can truly help you shape and focus your mix with just a few quick turns of a knob. As you’ll see in the video, by moving parts farther away from the center, you open up a pocket of space that allows your mix to shine. Enjoy the video everyone!
Comments
I really like this concept !!!!
Interesting stuff sir. I’ve always panned all over the place too. Great tip – I’ll try this next time.
Also known as Cardinal Positions, this technique has really helped my mixing. I’ve also found that once I get everything working LCR, some things benefit from panning back in between. It typically isn’t more than one or two things though. So like any “rule” in audio, know it well enough to decide when it’s appropriate to break it.
Definitely Randy…rules are meant to be broken in the audio world. It really is a great mental shift for the mixer though!
I’ve thought about this technique since I first heard about it, and it does open things up nicely on speakers. However, how does it work on headphones/earbuds? I re-listened to the segment on my earbuds after asking that question, and it sounds a little odd. That’s because the L and R elements are completely in a single ear, which is of course unnatural. It’s for this reason that I don’t pan anything hard L/R – so that earbud-wearing listeners don’t get that out of balance feeling from not having certain sounds showing up in the other ear.
I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t bother you the way it bothers me. Still, a good mix tool, but I don’t think I would leave it that way in the final mixdown.
Robert – You get over how “odd” it sounds. So much modern music is mixed this way that it might actually surprise you when you go back and listen. So much is panned hard left and right and it sounds really good.
Brad – Stereo keyboards can definitely be hard left and right if you want. That won’t simply put them in the center because the low keys are more left balanced than the higher keys. Just like if you stereo miked a piano. You can of course also pan them mono…more on this in a later video!
Philip – Not sure if Kevin mixes this way. You’ll have to ask HIM
Hmmm so what do you do with Stereo tracks like keyboards? Wouldn’t Full Left and Right just put it in the center?
Dig it!
Is this a Kevin Ward tip?
I’m going to definitely check this out!
Great post Graham! This is tip instantly improved my most recent mix! Thanks for sharing all of this great information and keep up the awesome work!
I probably lean more towards Ian Shepherd’s view on this, but I haven’t tried it a lot. I tend to stray away from hard panning left and right, but I can definitely see how it might be a cool thing to try.
Always something new to try…thanks Graham!
I stumbled upon this video tonight and it reminded of the concept of LCR panning. Seems very effective… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ClCpfeIELw
That is very cool. Sure places the ‘important’ part right out there. Thanks.
Graham,
What’s your take on this when mixing an acoustic solo artist where you may have 1 or 2 rhythm tracks, multiple intricate guitar fill tracks throughout, main vocal with multiple harmonies and light percussion (shaker, tambourine). Same approach?
Chris, with fewer tracks it’s not as hard to get separation (which is the goal of LCR panning). But I would still say take up the whole spectrum (hard left and right) rather than pan conservatively in the middle. Just me.
Iknow this is late ,but should someone pick up on this I would appreciate a thought or an answer, etc…You are most likely aware that in PRO TOOLS, it doesn’t matter where you pan your AUDIO TRACKS. Point I’m trying to make is that if you group any of your tracks to a AUX BUS, the PANNING there is what you will get and the audio panning had been all in vain. Am I right or did I overlook something. I hope I did.
Thanks,
TOMMY
That doesn’t sound right to me. You should be able to pan anything anywhere you want!
Try it! Route an audio track, or tracks to an aux. The routing on the AUX will take precedence. Say -1 mono L GUITAR TRACK + 1 mono R GUITAR TRACK can be panned anyway, until you say, route them to an AUX, ETC.. Now wherever you pan the aux channel will govern the panning.
Take Care,
TOMMY
Try it! Route an audio track, or tracks to an aux. The routing on the AUX will take precedence. Say -1 mono L GUITAR TRACK + 1 mono R GUITAR TRACK can be panned anyway, until you say, route them to an AUX, ETC.. Now wherever you pan the aux channel will govern the panning.
Take Care,
TOMMY
I’m not a Pro Tools user, but I’ve gotta believe that if you pan something hard left and send it to a stereo bus (panned left and right) it will stay panned hard left. If you take that stereo bus and pan it all the way right, then yes, I imagine that would override the panning of the individual track.
Tommy – That would be incorrect. The purpose of the stereo bus (aux track) is to pass audio through it. Whatever your panning positions are in the individual track basis, will remain the same when passed through a stereo bus. It doesn’t force new panning on it.
UNLESS however you adjust the panning of that stereo aux track to something other than hard L and R. But that would be weird.
Graham – So how would you mix the guitars where you have a lead vocal, 1 Rhythm guitar, 1 lead guitar for fillers and solo, drums and bass? Would you create 2 tracks for the rhythm panned hard L&R? And would you keep keep the lead guitar in the center so that it’s frequencies don’t interfere with the rhythm guitar? Thanks.
Puneet – if the two guitars are playing a lot together, I would pan them hard left and right, opposite of each other. If you have spots with a lot of rhythm guitar and no lead, it is nice to have a double panned opposite to fill it out. If you need a double that you didn’t get to record, try this: http://therecordingrevolution.com/2010/09/01/the-instant-double-technique-video/
Thanks for your blog and tutorial videos. I also like that you manage to get some Christian message out there (subconsciously) with the music on the tracks you use.
I tried this on a live track I recorded at a gig onto 8 tracks. Drums, Bass, Lead Vox center. Normally I would pan a little left and right lead and rhythm guitar, maybe ever so slightly b.v’s. I went for full hard LR on those tracks. It worked really well, even the B.v’s. And, I’m from a band that still listens to music in Mono, and most recent release (not recorded by me) was done in Mono.
I belive that, in Protools, if you want the track panning to remain true to the track when sending the track to a Aux buss you need to set the send to FMP , Follow Main Pan” in the send. If you don’t do that, the send panning will default to center…Bye the way, I,m new to your site but you post some very nice material, easy to understand and , best of all, it works! Thanks!
Hey Graham, it’s been a number of months since this post. By way of an update, how has this particular technique panned out (no pun intended!) for you so far? What are you doing these days?
Thanks! And as always, love your work and sincerely appreciate you..
~ Chris M.
Using right now on my band’s latest album
[...] the other hand, LCR Panning is very useful when you have a lot of other instruments filling up the mix. Meaning: Hard pan [...]
[...] the other hand, LCR Panning is very useful when you have a lot of other instruments filling up the mix. Meaning: Hard pan [...]
I’ll have to try it out on my next song.
My only concern is how does this technique sit with toms?
I’m used to have the toms paned from left to righ so the fils naturally progress from one speaker to another.
How does it sound with the LCR technique?
It works great. Toms pop from left to right (or vice versa). You hear this on a lot of tunes these days if you listen closely.
[...] of these points and move all of your tracks to one of those three spots. This is sometimes called LCR Panning or LCR Mixing, but in reality it’s simply a smart way to work that makes mixing easier for [...]