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Panning with only a few instruments? (kbin.social)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I’m struggling to pan the chorus of my song. It only has drums, bass, one slightly distorted guitar and a lead vocal.

The drums have a nice default panning spread from L-R in the DAW I’m using (Logic). But the convention I’m reading online recommends putting bass and vocal in the centre.

My question is, what do I do with the guitar, which is just playing a power chord at the beginning of each bar.

I like songs that fill the stereo spectrum but due to the composition, this one seems narrow by comparison.

I’ve read about stereo expanders but I’m not sure when to sure them. I was also thinking that I could somehow split the guitar into two tracks by frequency and pan those differently. Not sure how to go about that yet and then not sure if I would need to do the same for vocals in that case.

Any suggestions on how to make the mix a bit more exciting without changing the composition ?

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[–] OneBlindMouse 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Definitely keep the things like vocal bass, kick etc straight down the middle. You could consider sending the guitar to a separate bus, adding some soft effects and then panning those. Depending on the tone of your bass, you can duplicate it, high pass one and low pass the other, send the low down the middle and slightly pan the brighter track. You could achieve quite a bit of width just doing this and without recourse to stereo imaging, which of course you can still use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I wanted to try something like that and what I did was double tracked the bass and put an EQ on each of them. But I wasn’t sure if I was cutting them 50% each (high / low pass), or if I even need to be that strict. I’ll revisit it and go by ear rather than eye because this sounds exactly like what I need. Thank you!

[–] OneBlindMouse 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

When you say 50%, are you referring to the 'middle' of the frequency curve..? Try separating... low and high pass at about 150-200Hz then centering the low, keeping it clean and adding some kind of saturation to the high then panning two of that, not mad or hard L/R. If the bass conflicts with the kick for space, give the kick priority, either using dynamic EQ or multiband on a side chain.

There is no right or wrong here, just 'what works' but finding the sweet spot in these strategies might help.

Someone below mentioned double tracking the guitar by replaying. This is a good idea but make sure your timings are hitting, especially on supporting 'power' chords, otherwise you'll also lose punch in the final mix. If you're double tracking, listen in mono too. You will possibly have phasing issues.

Enjoy.