ALTERNATE REALITY

Placing mics in positions that create different, uneven or unbalanced – call them what you will – perspectives is a powerful way to achieve wide yet beautifully realistic final mixes without the need, in many cases, for artificial reverb, EQ or delay. Unfortunately, most people can’t typically see far enough into the production of an audio project to predict where a sound might ultimately be placed in any final mix (unless they’re recording classical music). And it’s fair enough too. It’s sometimes virtually impossible to say from the outset in a long chain of anticipated overdubs where that second acoustic guitar or fifth backing vocal might ultimately be positioned between two speakers. But that’s not to say it’s always unpredictable. It’s often quite easy to anticipate where things will be placed in a final stereo mix given certain known expectations.

Take, for instance, the example of a song that only involves the recording of one vocal and two separate acoustic guitars. In that situation it’s highly likely that the two guitars will eventually wind up being panned away from one another to some extent, and yet more often than not, despite this expectation, 99 times out of 100 an engineer will insist on recording both acoustics via an X/Y mic configuration (or similar) with no regard for their final mix perspective.

Why not? This circumstance provides the perfect opportunity to record each acoustic guitar in such a way that when the two mics around each instrument are panned hard left and right, the first guitar will end up with a ‘nine o’clock’ (left-heavy) perspective, and the other a ‘three o’clock’ (right-heavy) perspective, with the more ambient mics dominating the middle-ground. This naturally leaves space for the vocal in the centre, and a sense of depth behind the voice that may even negate the need for artificial reverb altogether. Exploring the space during tracking sessions while maintaining a careful lookout for phase issues can produce recordings that are naturally bigger, wider and more spacious sounding. For acoustic-based music in particular, the outcome can be far superior to standard mic placements followed up with artificial reverbs.

This ‘asymmetrical’ mentality can be applied to all kinds of tracking sessions of course, and involve everything from subtle imbalances that create almost imperceptible depth perspectives through to radical changes involving one close mic and a second placed 20 yards down a tiled hallway. Pan this latter combination left and right for truly mind-blowing electric guitar echo.

FLY-BYS & AUTOMATION

These days, some of the more radical forms of panning used during mixing are concocted using digital automation. Needless to say without this advanced control many of the elaborate moves we make today would be impossible. The potential for weaving these automated panning scenarios into other simultaneous mix changes – whether they be arrangement- or mute-based changes, EQ mods or compression overhauls – is literally endless.

Compelling and/or complex mix changes very rarely require the adjustment of only one technical component. Take for instance the example of a relatively simple sound that’s designed to crescendo at the end of a song’s verse, adding impact to the first downbeat of a chorus. This sound might involve some sort of combination of backwards elements – say a detuned piano and a cymbal. The obvious thing to do with these sounds is simply start them off low and ramp them up as the chorus approaches.

But there’s another more convincing technique that consistently produces superior results (to quote a popular washing detergent commercial). Although it’s a more complicated operation involving a balance of automated moves all working together, once you get used to working this way it quickly becomes second nature. In combination with automated volume, EQ and reverb, panning changes can be used in this instance to create the illusion that our sounds are genuinely coming at us with 3D-like realism. You can’t achieve this by simply increasing their volume.

Let’s starts with our collection of backwards elements first appearing imperceptibly low in the mix. When they first kick-in, they’re mono – either placed in the dead centre of the stereo image or off-centre; it doesn’t matter, so long as they form a point source on the horizon, as almost any object would. The sound montage is also very wet initially (perhaps 80% or so, with no predelay) and EQ’d to possess less top and bottom end. As the sound races towards us for the dramatic arrival of our chorus, the sound changes in several ways all in the space of a few seconds: the source sounds get louder (via volume automation); the reverb dries up, and as it does, increasing the predelay helps isolate the sound from its reverberant surrounds (and the bigger the predelay, the larger the environment our sound appears to have raced towards us from); the fidelity of the source sounds improves by restoring top and bottom end (again via plug-in automation), and finally the panning spreads from mono to stereo as the sounds quickly take up our entire field of vision. In the case of this specific example – where the sound effect is made up of two distinct noises – it might be interesting to pan one sound to the left and the other right in the last half-second of the crescendo, to create the impression that the two sounds have raced towards us from afar and then flown past either side of our head at the last moment.

CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS?

But not all panning is about sound effects is it. Unlike the example above, the bulk of panning that contributes to the creation of fantastic mixes doesn’t necessarily figure in the consciousness of the listener at all. Even panning that’s movement based can be divided into two basic categories: movement that can be tracked (ie. witnessed) by the listener – like our backwards crescendo example – or panning automation that’s crafted to function invisibly as part of a sound itself. Here are some other brief examples of both:

• A rapid-fire autopan setting that makes a sound shake or shimmer in the stereo image might go unnoticed by a listening audience but add greatly to the impact of song transitions. Typically derived from an outboard effect or plug-in, fast autopan on drum overheads at the transition points of a song can make the drum sound ‘shake’, adding impact where the performance might have understated the transition.

• Big effects on things like vocals etc – basically anything that plays a significant role in a mix – can sometimes benefit from their own movement, particularly at key points in a production. Sometimes a particularly long and vivid reverb tail can sound more 3D if it reduces from stereo to mono as it fades, inferring depth and horizon-bound movement. Whether this change goes unnoticed or conversely becomes a dead-set hook is hard to predict.

• Sounds can also appear to be moving without there being any panning automation at all. For example, recording two similar tremolo electric guitar performances with different speed and depth settings on the amp can generate some truly ‘wide and wobbly’ mix interest. Again, the recording process does all the work here; all the mix engineer has to do is pan the two recordings apart and leave the instruments to it. Panned in wide stereo, the two individual sounds appear to wobble as one in an unpredictable manner. Again, nothing is being pan-automated as such; the two individual (though similar) sounds are simply rising and falling in volume independently of one another – your brain does the rest.

• Non-core rhythm elements or melodic phrases can sometimes be shared between both speakers: one phrase voiced in the left, the next in the right, and so on back and forth. Panning instruments that are intentionally designed to be elusive in the mix in a constant, even unpredictable, manner is another good way to conceal them without turning them down.

‘TECHNICAL’ PANNING

Where panning goes almost undetected, yet has arguably the greatest impact on a mix is where it helps choreograph ‘focus’, and fundamentally, instruments panned dead-centre tend to command greater focus than things panned hard to one side (though not always).

All good mixes have an element of ‘focus’ control about them, whereby different instruments are brought to a listener’s attention at different points along a timeline. But regardless of whether this manipulation is done subtly or bluntly, panning often plays a significant role. Here are some other examples.

Pan automation is great at subtly ‘moving things aside’ as a new element steps into the limelight. Take a guitar lead break that plays through an instrumental chorus, across the transition and into the next verse before the finally trailing off. As the performance falls away, panning the guitar from dead-centre to the middle-left while simultaneously increasing the space around it (with reverb, delay or room mics etc) emphasises its retreat, and fluidly anticipates the approach of the next new focus element that’s swinging into view in from the middle-right and panning dead-centre as it reaches its maximum volume.

A song’s plainly-strummed intro acoustic guitar might start off mono but then spread slowly left and right in anticipation of the arrival of the main vocal, by panning the close guitar mic left and adding a second ambient mic to the equation on the right-hand side. This works well if you perform the shift just as the vocal kicks in. That way the change of spatial balance occurs as if by magic. If you perform the shift too early and the trick’s mechanics are revealed this manoeuvre can sometimes sound dodgy, although occasionally this exposure is a good thing, maybe even a hook – it’s impossible to say until you try it.

Backing vocals might sit well panned, say, 60% left/right around a main vocal but then open out to 85% when the chorus hits. Sounds that draw focus as they grow louder in the centre of a mix can sometimes feel as though they’re pushing other elements aside that were previously panned to the middle-left or right. If that seems to be the case, act on your instinct: as something grows louder in the centre, pan things slightly wider to accommodate it. Then, as the sound recedes, close ranks back in around it. Almost no-one will notice this happening, not even the artist half the time, but it keeps the mix sounding fluid in an unconscious way, and in some situations creates the illusion that the mix is alive without people really ever grasping how or why. This is a particularly important skill to hone when you’re working on material that superficially requires ‘no production’ or visible signs of mix tampering. Flexibility is one of the greatest gifts 21-century DAWs have provided us and automation is one of the most advanced tools in the shed.

A WORD ON MOVEMENT

Panning that’s fixed in position – ie. doesn’t move – during the course of a production is relatively simple to craft, and for these static audio elements, the overall balance that panning establishes between the left and right speakers is crucial to the final outcome. For ‘on the move’ sounds, however – moving either because the source was shifting its position during tracking (like a rallycar flying past a fixed mic position etc), the mics were spinning on a turntable while you were recording, or panning automation is being deployed – the mix balance becomes trickier. There are several reasons for this, all of them subjective and ultimately resolved only by your own intuition and taste.

The key to understanding which explicit panning movements best benefit your mix involves knowing what roles these instruments that you’re setting in motion are performing in the first place. Panning a main vocal all over the place, for example, would only likely prove annoying to most listeners. Judging whether or not movement of this type adds to, or detracts from, your final mix is a personal judgment call that only you and those around you can make. My two-bob’s worth on the subject would be that if an explicit panning shift seem gratuitous or silly within the context of the overall mix, ditch it.

Sometimes movement for the sake of it can feel tacky, and undermine the contribution that sound or instrument is making. At other times it’s ‘cool’ and has the capacity to hook the listener in. Judging the difference is a nebulous affair that takes practice and involves making a mistake or two along the way.

In the end, a mix usually comes across best when it features (or invisibly contains) a combination of static and automated panning setups. If it’s all static, the mix can tend to feel a little boring (but hey, maybe ‘boring’ suits the song!). Conversely, if everything is on the move, your mix may start feeling like a tank of tropical fish: every element too flashy, everything hard to focus on. Sturdy static elements help anchor a mix and allow movement-based components to create extra interest. Like all this stuff, in the end it tends to come down to the tasteful balance of ideas rather than an over concentration of one.

EXPLORING THE SPACE

Panning ultimately allows you to craft a stereo image to suit a collection of audio elements presented to you. Like all mixing, there is no ‘one way’, no ‘rule that always applies’. While panning can be one of the most elusive aspects of recording and mixing, it’s also one of the most powerful. Significant aspects of it relate to the ‘illusion of depth and width’, and like all good illusions, the trick only works if it’s performed in harmony with all the other elements. Once you start to discover its potential you’ll be opened up to more space than you ever thought was possible between two speakers.

BLUE MOUNTAINS BOUND

If mixing, for you, is fundamentally about creating a balanced three-dimensional world for your audio signals to inhabit, imagining that space from the outset is very important. Your early vision for it may evolve into something else later, of course, or be overrun by a stronger idea that occurs to you midstream, but imagining how the space you’ve chosen might behave if it were real is a good place to start.

Let’s say the task at hand is mixing a conventional rock song. A good thing to consider early on is how large the space will ultimately be that the overall mix is trying to occupy. Typically, the more sounds there are, the bigger that space will need to be – though not always. The way a song is recorded might also determine how you pan the signals, but whether it’s a tight, dry and airless room you’re looking to generate, or an epic Blue Mountains landscape, the sooner you decide this the better. Either way, choose your physical illusion wisely, in sympathy with the story the music is telling, but remember, if you have 100 people standing in front of you – and you want to see them all – your approach to panning is going to be quite different to if there had only been five or six (more on this shortly).

Okay, so let’s say we’re going for the ‘Blue Mountains’ option. I’ve heard the vocal, listened to the lead break and am inspired to go for broke! There aren’t 150 sounds that need accommodating between the speakers but nevertheless I want an epic soundscape. The decision is made, and it feels good…

CREATING A FOCUS

Time for some quick decisions… though these don’t necessarily need be set in stone quite yet. For the moment, the key is to remain open: to suggestion, to accidents, to ideas – any spark that will help trigger the illusion of space. First up, let’s decide on our fundamental focus. I’m going to say it’s the main vocal at this point (surprise, surprise) and pan this mono source dead centre right from the get-go, along with the bass guitar and kick drum, as per convention, and so that my bottom-end is being played by two speakers pushing and pulling in unison. Panning the focus elements dead centre also appeals to the listener on an unconscious level because almost anyone who focuses on a sound in the physical world will simultaneously turn (or attempt to turn) towards it, so the sound source is symmetrically positioned directly in front of them. (There’s no time to go into detail here about the physiology of this phenomenon, but simply stated, the desire of the brain to focus on a sound triggers the body to turn towards it – so that eyes and ears are front and centre.) Other instruments in my mix are two electric guitars and an acoustic, along with a tambourine, a keyboard drone, two BVs of the fairer sex, and several other incidental percussion and string-based instruments.

I’m not sure what to do with the guitars just yet but my early instinct is to pan the two electrics to about 8.30am and 3.30pm on the pan pots (about 87% on the DAW panners – more on why I’m not pushing them out to 100% in a moment). I’ll keep the acoustic guitar in the middle for now, it being the odd one out and one of three guitars. Incidentally, all these stringed instruments have been recorded with two mics, and they’ve not been submixed, which means I have the option of panning them in different ways, or not.

As things progress I settle on the panning of the electrics, and pan the stereo acoustic mics to about 10am and 2pm (about 40% on the DAW). One of these has slightly more bottom-end than the other, making the image seem slightly lopsided in favour of the brighter mic, and being obsessed with stereo balance – which we all should be – I endeavour to close the tonal gap between them a bit with EQ tweaks before finally deciding to pull the brighter mic in a tad.

Lots of other things are addressed during the course of the day, including the lead guitar break: the close-amp mic channel of which is panned centre with its room mics panned 60% left and right, and its level comparable to that of the vocal, befitting its focus – the other electrics are still playing during the solo.

STEREO ELECTRICS

As the mix evolves my mind is constantly addressing the picture in front of me, and the epic nature of the landscape I’m trying to portray. The guitars and vocal are key to this landscape making sense so I hone in further on the stereo electrics. These two instruments are interacting well and are naturally creating some nice movement across the stereo image, but the left one is my favourite; it’s big and beautifully played, and has epic qualities written all over it. The two mics on this instrument are an AEA R92 and a Shure SM57 (let’s say), and to create the illusion of scale, I change the position of the 57 to about 3pm on the pan pot and turn its level down a fair bit. I also add to this a delay of about 100ms (mixed 100% ‘wet’ with about 30% feedback) and immediately the scale starts changing. I exaggerate the 57’s tonal response, making it slightly boxier and harder, turn it down even further and immediately the guitar has started to sound ‘a bit epic’ – thanks to the panning, the altered tone (a sound at distance never has the same fidelity as when it’s up close) and the delay. But then it dawns on me: my big landscape guitar now sounds too much like it’s inside, not outside… the slap echo is too distinct and wall-like, even though it can certainly sound like that in the great outdoors sometimes. Hmmm.

I mumble something to myself like: ‘yeah, but who cares, stop being a super-realist you idiot’ but change tack anyway. I swap the mics around: the 57 is now 87% left and the R92 ribbon takes over the 57’s more distant, right-of-centre role, including taking on its delay settings, which are themselves now sounding duller and rounder. Suddenly my guitar is clearer and harder sounding; too hard in fact, so I ditch the 57’s initial EQ setting. I add a big 480L plate reverb, fed by the ribbon mic – panned hard left/right and featuring nothing much above 900Hz. The ribbon mic’s rounder tone accentuates the dull yet lengthy nature of the 480L space. To this I dial in a 180ms predelay. I eventually decide to duplicate the ribbon mic channel to help broaden and deepen the 57’s tone by tucking this duplicate back in behind the 57, separated in width by about 10%. Bingo, the guitar has become more vivid but also more epic sounding  – close yet enormous, thanks to the panning and predelays creating the illusion of something big and vaguely reflective in the middle distance on the right-hand side, and behind that a dull, wide and deep backdrop. There is no ‘zing’ coming back to the listener from this particular outdoor landscape.

The acoustic gets a smidge of the guitar’s 480L, but stays fairly tight in with the main vocal, which has a complex array of compressors, automated EQ and a vocal reverb. The vocal also has two delays on it that are panned 70% left/right – very dull – one of which is made to sound like it’s bouncing off the same hilltop as the guitar by also receiving a smidge of the 480L, and suddenly the song comes to life visually. I pan the drum kit but limit its width to a maximum of about 55% left/right on the overheads and toms. It sounds better from the kit’s individual perspective to go wider, but it makes no sense visually for it to be this wide in the physical landscape. When it’s made to sit back eight yards or so, thanks to a reverb, yet is panned hard left/right, it’s suddenly trying very hard to be 80 feet wide! I don’t want that. By placing the drums inside the guitars, their proportion remains realistic and the environment is made to sound even bigger, not smaller. Sorry drums.

USE YOUR ILLUSION

Finally (and briefly) to our other sounds: the female BVs are made brighter than the main vocal – yes brighter – but smaller, wetter and wider – panned to about 8am and 4pm, along with their reverb. I later just go ‘bugger it’ and pan their reverb fully left and right. The tambourine is back in the mix, panned centre, and its plug-in insert reverb is about 90% wet with no predelay and panned tight, about 35% left/right. This makes it seem like it’s far away. The key to this illusion is understanding that a big predelay would have inferred that the tambourine was closer to us than the mountains behind it – a predelay tends to separate a sound from the environment around it – but we don’t want that. We want it to come towards us from a great distance as if it’s out there in the landscape. No predelay helps convince us of this ‘natural phenomenon’ and contributes to the overall illusion of scale.

I won’t go into any more detail than that – hopefully you get the picture.

The key to this mix being both interesting and physically ‘outdoorsy’ sounding is by constantly asking yourself questions like: ‘How would the ‘Blue Mountains’ themselves have reacted to this combination of sounds, where is Signal X originating from, and how should that affect my panning, tone and reverb?’ and so on. I’m not suggesting you become a literalist about all this, nor am I inferring that this disciplined visual approach applies to every mix – not at all. I’m simply illustrating the point that understanding how an actual landscape might have responded to the band had they literally been there, helps to provide your mind’s eye with a framework in which to work.

MONO E MONO

Above all else, panning helps create space and balance. The real trick is determining how to pan all your different sounds and instruments in such a way that the overall outcome remains symmetrical. One way to do this relates directly to the concept of panning for scale.

Let’s say, for example, we’re mixing 250 channels of instruments, voices and sound effects – I know, I know, that’s a hell of a lot! At the beginning of such a daunting session, it might seem nigh on impossible to ascertain what goes where, particularly when the multitrack file is delivered to you like a ‘fur ball’, with most things bunched up in the middle (see The Mind’s Eye box item for more on this). Trying to find ‘like pairs’ and ‘opposites’ in this world of confusion is exceedingly difficult.

In this extreme case the most important first principle to grasp is that the mix is going to be big – and unless you cut 100 channels out, you’re in for a very long haul. Secondly, a mix involving this many ‘characters’ means that, in some form or other, most of them will need to be discrete – i.e. mono (or almost mono). Yes, I know there are precious, masterfully captured stereo recordings of pianos, synths, choirs, guitars, orchestras, and so on in amongst all this, but trust me, if you get hung up on each one’s exquisite individuality – as it was recorded – and try and find a big wide space for each of them to occupy, you’re going to get very frustrated very quickly… and nowhere fast. All you’ll end up with is a big fat mess right in the middle of the image. The main alternative to this is to edit 60 percent of the instruments out of the mix – a viable, and in some cases preferable, alternative. (If an artist insists on having 250 sounds in their mix, it’s vitally important to make them realise early on that each sound will compromise all the others, and when there are so many, the compromises will be significant.)

Generally stated, big mixes featuring very few instruments can be easily created using wide panning regimes and stereo placement of instruments, delays and reverberation. Big mixes featuring hundreds of instruments, meanwhile, mostly require pinpoint mono sources, as well as layers of depth, a fine grasp of width, and overall balance. Discrete sources create natural focus, a vital ingredient when so many sounds are vying for the crowded space. If you’re faced with this level of mix complexity, consider the ‘mono sources’ option. Somewhat counter-intuitively, 200-odd mono sources panned throughout a stereo image will typically sound truly enormous, provided they are also placed at various distances from the listener. Lots of stereo instruments panned left/right, on the other hand, will not.

BALANCE, BALANCE, BALANCE

Panning is also fundamentally about balance. Bright signals panned left require some sort of counterbalance in the right. Things soloing in the right speaker should be overtaken by another instrument soloing in the left, and so on. It’s bad panning practice to make a mix sound lopsided for extended periods of time, either by making the tonal balance seem skewed to the left or right – too bright on one side – or by making one side inadvertently louder or more dynamic than the other. Whatever your instruments, and regardless of how many there are, it’s vitally important to achieve balance with your panning. If the music draws you in one direction for some reason or another, the balance must naturally be rectified by the next musical movement that comes along. Sure there are exceptions to this dogma, but they are few and far between. A mix that makes someone feel like they have something wrong with one ear, or speaker, is a bad mix. It might seem ‘cool’ at first, but that impression won’t last.

YOU ARE THE PERSPECTIVE

I won’t delve into another example now – we’re out of room unfortunately. Instead, I want to leave you with one final notion that applies more to physical three-dimensional panning regimes than the more radical ones we’ll explore next issue.

When you’re creating visual, illusion-based mixes like the one touched on earlier, there’s one thing to keep in mind: you, the listener, are the perspective. If you’re creating a big mix – very three-dimensional, wide and deep sounding – don’t push instruments that you want close up, too wide. The reason for this is fairly straightforward yet subjective, but also dependent on how much you want to outright mimic principles that govern the physical world.

If a sound (in an otherwise big, three-dimensional mix) is dry, yet panned 100% left, it feels like it’s stepping outside the lines of the stereo image (see illustration). Without any signal coming from the right speaker, it no longer feels like it’s in the space, but rather separated from it. If that’s what you want to achieve with this particular sound, fine – just be aware of it. The drier the sound, the closer it theoretically seems to be. If it’s 100% left, not only will it tend to compromise the scale of our most distant objects, it will also start sounding like its coming from behind you, particularly in headphones (more on that next issue). Not all mix engineers would agree with this, but in general, a dry, full-fidelity sound panned hard will tend to fight against the illusion of our deep, three-dimensionality, since no reverb can exist outside it. It also makes a listener instinctively want to turn towards it, which is impossible, and in headphones, would set you spinning! Avoid going past about 90% if you insist on going ‘wide and dry’. Of course, if you simply want to confound the overall illusion, go right ahead. Only one rule applies in the end: do you like the sound of it?

Next issue we’ll get stuck into some of the ways panning can contribute to movement and depth, how an instrument’s pan position might be anticipated at the recording stage, and explore a few of the more ‘out there’ effects-based techniques. Until then, explore the space (particularly with a cowbell), and always remember, balance is king.