Panning & EDM?
Panning & EDM? Posted on: 27.09.2009 by Harold Jaras let's get down and dirty with some advanced mixing techniques/discussions. so here's the theory for those unfamiliar with panning:most of us here that are only DJs know of panning as shifting the audio from left to right (talking simply stereo and skipping 5.1 audio, we'll get to that later), and maybe have dabbled with it a few times. for anyone who has gotten into producing, or studied tracks, you may have noticed that some instruments are panned differently than others throughout the song (guitars on right, bass on left, drums center, etc), or maybe a cool effect that shifted from one side to the other, giving a "sweeping" effect. when dealing with a lot of instruments in a song, you may find that putting everything in the "center" makes the mix sound crowded. with every instrument fighting for that center position, things can get muddy. just like if you saw a band live on stage, you don't see their amps/PAs huddled together next to/on top of each other, they're spread out over the stage. but what about EDM? sure, the drums are usually going to be dead center, they are the lifeline, and to give them more to one side of the dancefloor would be unfair, no? however, hi-hats can fluctuate to give a little motion, but whatever drives the beat should be equally spread throughout the stereo spread. but this got me believeing: what elements can really be spread out over the spread and still sit as properly in the mix as they should? i've mentioned that hi-hats can be given an occasional throw to either side, and snares could even alternate sides (i'm believeing more in terms of dubstep, if it's hard to get a mental image of this), but this leaves some crucial elements still fighting for that center spot: the "rhythm-driver" (bass drum, or whatever it may be), bassline, melody, etc. can these elements still sit centered and not be too crowded? the issue is finding a spread that sounds right for EDM. when i picture a bassline panned left and a melody panned right i just don't see it sounding good at all. anyone have a good method of panning this type of music? on the subject of 5.1, a quick question: if i had something panned in a way that only 5.1 could position correctly, how is it panned when played on a stereo system? i'd assume the 5.1 system has a measurement for how far left and right the sound is panned, so the stereo signal would just read this and disregard the extra information? any help/advice you guys can give is greatly appreciated. | |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Verona Fashbaugh 29.09.2009 | Can I just say I've learned a ton of stuff just from reading this thread?
Originally Posted by BentoSan
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| Luann Scatterday 01.10.2009 | well ya know where to post yer doubts ... In fact lemme just say yer trick is awesome but I wouldn't use it just for the fact that you'll end up with a bassline that sits in the mix like a Lead, and it will take a he** of a lot of space... but hey if it works for ya the great! The audio world is certainly not just black or white Maybe I would use 2 bands with small stereo spread but not 3 and so much spread! cheers, Z |
| Ashirumatic DJ 01.10.2009 | Sweet ! not being a wise ass at all. I could not remember where exactly the cutoff was for bass to be mono. |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Kick n Bass are The fundations of any mix. If you have a little panning when you are |
| Luann Scatterday 30.09.2009 | Not trying To be a wise as* or anything but as far as I know your safest but would be To have all content bellow 150hz as MONO. For several reasons; Sound becomes omnidirection bellow 150hz (a not just 100hz, some people evn state that is bellow 170hz, some people make it mono bellow 250hz just In case). So if you ears can tell where it's coming from there is no sense In having any panning. A mono Sound is always punchyer and beter defined... Is you get punched very hard one time just after de other you basically only feel the first punch cause. But if get punched In the left and right side of yer face exactly at The same time your face gets crushed In The middle... Luckily Im not talking by personal Experience here lol. Mono Bass is crucial for Vinyl pressing and again Bass Punch and definition (you can get away with it on CDS but Bass will always Sound a little funny and wimpy) Btw jus like you cut belos 30hz on yer master you can also cut abouve 18500hz or 19000 if you really wanna Play it safe. If you do a small boost around this cut point your doing more or less the vintage pultec eq effect. |
| Ashirumatic DJ 29.09.2009 | That all depends on where your kick drum is sitting in the frequency range. for me I like to route all my instrument to their own channels and channel groups. ie ... kicks would look something like this... kck1(ch1) kck2(ch2) kck3(ch3) ----> KCK(ch4) I do the same for snares.... snr1(ch5) snr2(ch6) snr3(ch8) ----> SNR(ch9) then I would route the group to its own bus KCK (ch4) SNR(ch9) ---> DRM KT(ch10) allowing me singular and over all control of my drum kit then when I do my bassline (may consist of multiple synth) I route that all to its own channels. I do not always do the routing as above. It really just comes down to what you are trying to accomplish. The technique I explained above works really well for Electro house basslines, DnB Reese, Dubstep wobbles etc... If you are wondering where you route your side chain to. That is up to you and the effect you want. You can route it to just the LO channel on the bass, the MID, HI or the who Synth Buss. You could even have it on a vocal track. Even to multiple channels which I have lots of fun doing. here is an example I tossed together bass buss.flp - 0.18MB This is a very rough layout and the synth you can build your own patch or replace it with a VST one you like. Here is an example of how I used both the panning trick and side chaining to better effect in a loop jasonj-proj3.mp3 - 1.14MB |
| Verona Fashbaugh 29.09.2009 | Can I just say I've learned a ton of stuff just from reading this thread?
Originally Posted by BentoSan
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| Ashirumatic DJ 29.09.2009 | That technique I read in a book called "The Remixers Bible" available at amazon.com of course. although when I started out I only bussed out two frequencies and I had some what no clue on what frequencies to bus or where to set em. The I sat down with Downlink ( http://www.myspace.com/downlinkdub ) and we talked shop for sometime. When I pulled that trick out he graciously skooled me on proper frequency range. approx 100hz and be below (sub bass) you want to keep mono because bass is mono. If you start panning it and end up having your stuff pressed to vinyl this will cause the need to jump from the grooves. roll shit off below 30hz because pretty much all systems; unless you get on one of those audiophile nutz system will not reproduce sound below 30hz. if they do it will more likley be more of a rumble and mud. you will notice they eq in reason just has a 30hz cut button. above 100hz to "I forget" is mid bass Exactly stated before is look up tutorials on eq mixing ranges, theory etc... PS : to have a look at what your sound are doing in FL Studio the Parametric Eq2 is a great one, as well as wave candy. or there is a VST call smexiscope . very handy! |
| Luann Scatterday 29.09.2009 | Basically you go from audio theory... ooops ... ok short way around lol ... Every sound is a "pulp of different frequencies" (except for the so called Pure tone aka Sine Wave).. so the most preeminent one is the one which best sums it up ... hence it's PITCH. Example : imagine you have a t-shirt in green with a couples of letters sayin Traktor Rocks in Red and Blue... you could say that your t-shirt has the colors red, blue and green, but if U had to say what color it was, you would obviously say it's green, 'cause it's by far it's most present and dominating one! Now insert an eq. on the channel you need to find the sound's Pitch... on the eq set one of it's bands to be as narrow as possible (TURN DOWN YOUR MONITORS), turn all the other ones off, now boost that narrow band to the max!!! sweep it slowly from the lowest (probably 20hz) to the highest (prob. 20KHz)... where t distorts / resonates the most is it's Pitch... so basically and in sum, if a sounds pitch is "...the loudest voice in a certain room..." then if you could selectively boost by the same amount each voices one by one in turns, the one which stands out the most would be your pitch... Hope this is what you want ... PS - If it's a sample you can always you it's analise/ Statistics or what ever name is called the feature that can tell ya all about that sample (Peak, DC offset, Rms, Pitch, etc...) Z |
| Harold Jaras 29.09.2009 | damn that's a very intuitive technique, where/how did you learn that? i was wondering how exactly to find out what frequency range a certain instrument takes up. not really doing it by ear, but how to find the exact freq range. anyone know? |
| Ashirumatic DJ 29.09.2009 | Something else that really helps in panning and I do this with my basslines to control the frequency ranges separately. 1. First choose your synth a load your patch. A wobble perhaps. 2. Route the synth to your mixer and turn its bus off to the master channel. (We will assume we are starting with mixer channel 1) 3. now bus the synth out to 3 more channels that you will name Lo, Mid, Hi and turn off their master bus' (except for Lo) and place an eq in each. Rolling Lo off (Lowpass) at 100hz, Mid 100hz to 300hz (this can be done to taste), and Hi 300hz (Highpass). ** the frequencies you will choose for your song may differ. 4. Now bus the Mid channel to two more channels which will be named "Left" panned 50% to the left and "Right" panned 50% to the right. 5. Repeat this for the Hi channel, but panning the Hard "Left" and Hard "Right". 6. The channels you will want routed into the master channel channel (getting sound from) should now be Lo , Both Left Channels and Both Right Channels. now what you should be left with is a wall of sound from your bass synth. You can add in various effects no in each frequency range like distortion, chorus. I personally like adding a CamelPhat VST onto the Mid with some rhythmic distortions and a CamelSpace VST onto the Hi bus to give spacial effects. I apologize if I may not be clear enough and for the lack of visual aids. I will keep an eye out for youtube vids for this technique and add them later. hit me up if you have questions. |
| Luann Scatterday 29.09.2009 | keep' em coming m8 I'm also learning form other posts so it's all good from my part! Z |
| Harold Jaras 29.09.2009 | this thread has been a world of help I sincerely thank you guys for explaining this. every book I read made a big deal of panning but I never understood why, so you guys have my gratitude |
| Luann Scatterday 29.09.2009 | Bento... I'm with ya 100% but what I mean was similar sounds, not the same sound ... so many tracks use open HAts, rides, shakers at the same time ... of course it is unwise to have it all on the space (pan) with same frequen. (eq) and energy (comp/ side-chain)... another example of what I meant... if I have to Claps, say a 909 and an RZ-55 I would pan them to different sides (of course with different eq. settings aswell). Z |
| Xavier Emanuels 29.09.2009 |
Originally Posted by DJ_Ze_MigL
Lets take dnb for example, when artists are layering snares together they wont layer 2 snares that both sit on 300hz - with the second snare thats being layered will have the 300hz peak filtered/EQed. This has a huge impact on the quality of a production and results in much tighter sounding mixes. |
| Luann Scatterday 28.09.2009 | exemple open and closed hats, crash, ride cymbals... all similar-ish sounds ... I believe it is harder for a speaker to reproduce two similar sounds with similar energy and content than to have each side reproduce more of one than then other, ... surely the reproduction is more detailed and efficient, as result sounds should be clearly defined in a mix with out having to increase volume, tweak eqs and other trickery to make'em come apart from each other ... so they become easily percieved. I generally produce at very low level and most of the time at evening , never had any neighbor complaints (and yes my neighbors are bellow 70 years old lol). This as the consequence of you needing to have a very defined mix, with eq and panning, otherwise the only way to make something stand out it to increase its volume, and that won't fly at 3am... It took me some time to get used to it and curb my enthusiams but it's also easier to be tricked if you produce at considerably high levels... than there's the ear fatigue even after very few hours and the Fletcher-munson sensibility curves bla bla bla... Z |
| Harold Jaras 28.09.2009 |
Originally Posted by DJ_Ze_MigL
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| Luann Scatterday 27.09.2009 | another thing some clubs are so big that if you use to much pan the people standing next to the right speaker only get about "half" of yer music message. 5.1. to me only makes sense with effects like verb, delays ans stuff, even with EDM center stage makes sense unless you really tame down all other channels to introduce only one sound to one of the channels... hummm how can I explain better!?? with 2 or 2.1 you can get a long with even 2 different guitar riffs, one on each side, but mre than thing it would feel like standing in the middle of an argument with 5 people talking at the same time ... to much info! IMHO! Z |
| Luann Scatterday 27.09.2009 | Lemme just say that way to many clubs still have mono or mono sum systems I never go more that 70% pan on sounds... I believe of panning just like actors on stage, the more important to the plot they are the more center stage they have to be... I use HPF on almost all sounds except on BassDrum, sidechain on bassline is a must ... No panning on BD ans Bass all the rest gets panned... I use a simple rule, similar sounds get opposite panning... not only u get more space in the mix but it also sounds more intrigging and attention catching to your ears... you can do preatty minimal stuff without sounding like a total LOOP just by cleverly using pan!! jus my 2 cents, Z |
| Harold Jaras 28.09.2009 | ah, duh. i know the technique and have used it a couple times on tracks. sometimes over-believeing things blocks out your common sense :P thanks for the clarification on 5.1, too. how widespread is club usage of 5.1 systems? |
| Xavier Emanuels 27.09.2009 | Its true that lumping everything into the center is going to give you a more muddy sounding mix than doing some panning, especially when you have two sounds occupying the same frequency range, panning helps a huge amount here to get a clearer sound because it helps the frequencies not to be fighting one another as much. The crowding muddy effect really is only present when you have 2 sounds occupying the same frequency range playing at the same time. To overcome the "Crowding effect" with a bassline and a kickdrum sidechain compression is used, so the very low end of the bass quickly drops away when the kick hits then comes back - this way you can have the bass and the kick drums panned centre and you dont have them fighting one another. As for your 5.1 question. 5.1 recordings contain multiple channels while a stereo recording only contains 2 channels. If you play a 5.1 recording on a 2 channel system your only going to hear the left and right channels - that is of course unless you mix the other channels into the stereo signal. |
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