This is probably the most helpful mixing tip video i've seen on RUclips yet. I've taken this approach with my last 2 mixes and it has really worked well.I always hated hard panning and it's probably a hangover from the Beatles stereo mixes which very feel disjointed to me. Basically the stereo space approx between 2 to 5 o'clock,and 7 to 10 o'clock remain empty,going against all of your instincts to fill up that space.Once i had this theory set up on a recent mix i found that even introducing one guitar into the 2 to 5 area started to immediately clutter things up again.
Can't tell you how highly I think of this video. Not only is the information tip top, but your delivery is purposeful without too many annoying "uhhhs" and "ummms".
This is easily one of the most informative videos I've seen on this sort of subject matter. It's concise, explains why, doesn't spend too much time telling you simple things you already know like "How to pan" and actually shows you real-time adjustments that make sense. Honestly, I can already tell you I'm going to have much better success with my mixes just from seeing this one video, and I'm looking forward to diving into this series more. Thank you.
I've heard about 100 times before about it - imaginary box, depth, 3 dimensions of the mix and so on, but only after this video I TRULY REALISED how it works
This is an especially useful tip for people like me who use a portastudio that doesn't have many of the bells and whistles of a computer-based DAW. It's inspiring to see what a difference you can make using just faders and pan. Looking forward to part 2. Thanks, man.
simple things make really a huge difference. I always thought that panning in all directions clears things up, yet i never were really satisfied with any of my mixes since it seemed just crowded and lush. Thank you, i know now how to fix it!
Wow in all the struggles I've had with my mixes, it just never occurred to me to take an LCR approach. And after a couple of years of studying and reading and soaking up videos, it's just incredible that I haven't come across it. I have been a chronic rainbow panner all this time, and look where's it's gotten me. LOL! Will be trying this starting from tomorrow. Thanks!
Best tutorial ever!... Yes you have to un cluster your mixes! go hard left or right, balance your overall levels, than bring back your panning only on the more important track other than your centre ones.
At 5:21 basically EVERY other user who would make a video like this would say: "All this i can learn you if you go to this website and pay $250." But not you Graham..you switch over to your DAW and show us :)
Thank you for making this point again! :) I needed to hear it again. I have caught myself doing the "rainbow" effect mixing lately. Thanks for all the valuable information you consistently produce. -Barrett
I always saw hardpanning as an extreme that should be avoided but the LCR approach suprisingly worked wonders on this House tune I got here. It's very obvious when soloed but when it all comes together in the mix it's really open and separated.
I know your question was intended for Graham, but I thought I'd add my thoughts. You're correct in putting the kick, snare and bass in the middle, atleast for contemporary music. You've got remember that that is the meat of your mix, so make it the center of it. As far as the rest of the track... every song is different! What I usually aim for is to balance the track sonically and frequency wise on the left and right. I usually try to make sure the eq lines up on both sides...
Hey Graham great video! Very helpful stuff! I noticed most your videos focus on plenty of tracks and instruments going on at once in the mix like full bands and stuff. Would you mind doing a mix video for basic singer/song writers, with just like, acoustic guitar, vocals, maybe some piano and strings? That would be cool to see mixing in that perspective. Thanks and keep up the great videos!
Try it. I've tried it and it works well. Experiment with it, even though it might seem scary at first (which is what I still get sometimes). IMO, it only really works with relatively small-footprint sounds. Like pads and leads (mostly pads) are going to be everywhere (left-center-right) and you can try panning everything else (besides the bass and kick).
this was such a great video looking forward to next week. I've read about this and heard about but didn't understand it till today like right now thanks so much gram!!!
Thank you very much. Now, my question is could this information apply to Jazz music? Thank you again for your help. I mostly use Piano, guitar, bass, drums, strings, and congos for my songs I write.
Alot of people do it, apparent somebody somewhere teaches it. Personally, I don't routinely pan ANYTHING 100% (or even equal amounts) left and right. I save the 90-100% range for certain things that I want to get a listener's instant attention (sound bytes, sound effects, eerie harmonies, spoken phrases, etc). By reserving that space only for certain things of infrequent or one-shot presence, you virtually guarantee it's noticability. Just my pref, tho, your mileage may vary.
You are correct. The idea is also that the majority of club systems that EDM music will be played through will be mono, so all of the key elements of the track need to basically be straight down the middle so they aren't lost on a mono system. Also tracks being pressed to vinyl NEED to be mono below about 100Hz otherwise the needle skips..
You said panning creates width but from what I learned panning is only left and right and delays create width but only up to about 30ms difference from side to side, then you start hearing the delay as a delay. Hence why people delay one guitar slightly to create a bigger wider sound
Great video yet again. I'm looking forward to my mixing session on Friday. I've been getting really inspired from your videos and your podcast with Joe. The one thing I'm going to try and keep in mind is to take some chances and not play things safe. After all it's my art and I can't do any wrong.
heres the thing that always confuses me. if you pan hard left, what happens when you make the mix mono? does the sound disappear like it would if you made it too wide?
Hard panning so much stuff seems crazy to me. This approach definitely worked with this guitar led example; I think this is partly because you have multiple guitar sounds that have a wide frequency spectrum that overlap each other. But would this work with more clinical electron sounds for instance that have a lot of frequency separation?
Thanx the Lord for you!!!! Because they are a lot of other RUclips channel that try what you do, but they are not as (Blessed) at communicating as you are.. So keep up the Great service to all...p.s I guarantee something Great Financially would appear in your near future.
This are excellent instructions. It strikes me that the 'LCR' paradigm is how much of Alternative Rock achieves that "stark" sound. I've always been trained in the more "rainbow" method you spoke of and it's time for me to try LCR.
Early in my production career(as a teenager on 4 track and later with early versions of Cubase) i tried the Beatles way. I found it drastic and ridiculous. The reasons George Martin got away with it were simple. Stereo was new. (Remember, most of the versions we're hearing from the 80's on, were never heard then...rarely at best). They seemed to separate the tracks with little thought as to practicality. The main reason those ramshackle stereo mixes worked were...it's the freaking Beatles. Period. It doesn't work for Mortals.
Reverb as well applies a feeling of depth. In real life, the further something is, the more reverb there will be on it. Just being lower in volume won't create the complete illusion of distance.
Hello, in "Mixing Audio" of Roey Izhaki, the author says that you need to prevent "W" mix (only hard left, hard right and center panning) . It seems they don't take advantage of the full panoramic and Roey calls them "stereo spread imbalance" with "lacking areas". Another quote about this :"It's like having three adjacent players missing from a row of trumpets players" To him, it's a big deficiency. It's contradictory with what you say. Something to reply anyone ?
most daws have a mono mixdown option, so you can do all the fancy panning and if you were to play at a club with a mono system you can just use the mono mixdown
That is where you need to do research, honestly look up statistics on this kind of stuff. Where are people listening most? There car, clubs, etc.. You need to find statistically where most of your audience listens and that will guide whether LCR or mono is better. I am only saying this because I don't listen to much electronic music. I do know however mid side eq is popular in dance.
The only thing I would say with regards hard L&R panning is in headphones it sounds really weird. The brain is designed to hear the time delay and volume difference between a single signal hitting each ear. If a signal reaches one ear and not the other it confuses the brain. I notice it a lot if I monitor a dry signal hard panned in headphones, sending a small amount to a mono centered reverb or just pulling it in by one click gets rid of this confusing effect. Sos draw my attention to this.
A thing about edm tracks is that tracks are made to be playable in huge PAs with minimum distortion/quality loss between them, regarding a certain amount of homogeneity. It might be weird if had heavy bass paned to one side. In today's "concert style", the songs would clash too much.
Hey there, In those acoustic songs that you have in your videos, i can totally think of what the mix would sound like with a professional touch, but in electronic music, is that possible too? because in EDM i have never heard a song that "jumps" to me. Is it that EDM songs arent set to be out of the box? Or havent i heard a really well mixed electronic song yet?
how many vocals did you record to make it sound like that? And witch plugins?.I like the way it sounds.I want my hip hop vocals to sound like that.I subscribed, I love the tutorial and thank you for your time.I'll be waiting for your response soon.my name is Omar.
The rainbow effect - guilty. It seems counterintuitive to pan hard left/right since, I think, we have the wrong paradigm when it comes to mono/stereo in the recording process.
for a better listening experience. And as for a lead guitar with no vocals, I'd let it take center stage along with the kick. Just make sure the kick and snare aren't ducking under it. Again, that will take some practice - considering every song is different. Hopefully this helps, and remember... this is just a guide. Do what sounds a feels right to you!
This was eye opening, Grant! Thank you! PS: I've heard some people say that if you pan guitars 100% left or right, you risk losing them in car speakers. Do you think that's true?
11 лет назад
thanks for this Graham=) You're a hero =) I've learned a lot from your videos =)
I totally disagree with LCR - it means making L&R spots in mono and overloads the bus which means lower volume and hence a weaker mix. Things that go outside the speakers rely on negative waveforms in the opposite channel i.e. Outside right needs -left to do this - See Jimi's EXP on Axis from 1967! Its better to think of your band in a room or space and set them out, rather like you would an orchestra.
The examples you showed were thorough, but if you stick to LCR strictly, at some point I feel like your going to run into issues where frequencies start stacking on each other too much, depending on the amount of channels your panning, or am I wrong... just a thought, any advice is welcomed for sure..
![Don't Crowd The Mix Box [Part 2] - TheRecordingRevolution.com](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EQ19aYCCXG8/mqdefault.jpg)
![Don't Crowd The Mix Box [Part 2] - TheRecordingRevolution.com](/img/tr.png)
This is probably the most helpful mixing tip video i've seen on RUclips yet.
I've taken this approach with my last 2 mixes and it has really worked well.I always hated hard panning and it's probably a hangover from the Beatles stereo mixes which very feel disjointed to me.
Basically the stereo space approx between 2 to 5 o'clock,and 7 to 10 o'clock remain empty,going against all of your instincts to fill up that space.Once i had this theory set up on a recent mix i found that even introducing one guitar into the 2 to 5 area started to immediately clutter things up again.
Can't tell you how highly I think of this video. Not only is the information tip top, but your delivery is purposeful without too many annoying "uhhhs" and "ummms".
This is easily one of the most informative videos I've seen on this sort of subject matter. It's concise, explains why, doesn't spend too much time telling you simple things you already know like "How to pan" and actually shows you real-time adjustments that make sense. Honestly, I can already tell you I'm going to have much better success with my mixes just from seeing this one video, and I'm looking forward to diving into this series more. Thank you.
ive been producing for 2-3 years and this may be the most helpful video ive seen. instant difference in my mix. thank you!
I love your channel and all your videos, but this is now one of my favorites. Great job and thank you for sharing with us.
oh my god.. I loved it. no one has ever been so simple and clear in explaining these real life problems.. thank you alot
I've heard about 100 times before about it - imaginary box, depth, 3 dimensions of the mix and so on, but only after this video I TRULY REALISED how it works
This is an especially useful tip for people like me who use a portastudio that doesn't have many of the bells and whistles of a computer-based DAW. It's inspiring to see what a difference you can make using just faders and pan. Looking forward to part 2. Thanks, man.
simple things make really a huge difference. I always thought that panning in all directions clears things up, yet i never were really satisfied with any of my mixes since it seemed just crowded and lush. Thank you, i know now how to fix it!
Wow in all the struggles I've had with my mixes, it just never occurred to me to take an LCR approach. And after a couple of years of studying and reading and soaking up videos, it's just incredible that I haven't come across it. I have been a chronic rainbow panner all this time, and look where's it's gotten me. LOL! Will be trying this starting from tomorrow. Thanks!
Best tutorial ever!... Yes you have to un cluster your mixes! go hard left or right, balance your overall levels, than bring back your panning only on the more important track other than your centre ones.
At 5:21 basically EVERY other user who would make a video like this would say: "All this i can learn you if you go to this website and pay $250." But not you Graham..you switch over to your DAW and show us :)
Thank you for making this point again! :) I needed to hear it again. I have caught myself doing the "rainbow" effect mixing lately.
Thanks for all the valuable information you consistently produce.
-Barrett
Excellent ! Valuable information shown in a way that makes it perfectly clear what makes a mix crowded or not.
finally... this is what i've been searching for. thanks Graham
You made me a HUGE fan of LCR. Really good videos, thanks a lot!
Can't wait till the video next week!
Very good job with helping me (and so many others) out Graham..
A simple stipple sipple step... I LOVE IT!!
Excellent video. This is one of your best yet and a great concept I've not thought about before :)
I always saw hardpanning as an extreme that should be avoided but the LCR approach suprisingly worked wonders on this House tune I got here. It's very obvious when soloed but when it all comes together in the mix it's really open and separated.
I see you go a Patreon. Nice! I'm so glad to see Jack Conte's vision coming to fruition.
I know your question was intended for Graham, but I thought I'd add my thoughts. You're correct in putting the kick, snare and bass in the middle, atleast for contemporary music. You've got remember that that is the meat of your mix, so make it the center of it.
As far as the rest of the track... every song is different! What I usually aim for is to balance the track sonically and frequency wise on the left and right. I usually try to make sure the eq lines up on both sides...
Compare if you want: 5:46 - 13:15
What a great sum of advices ! Thank you for all, man, you are my master !
Hey Graham great video! Very helpful stuff! I noticed most your videos focus on plenty of tracks and instruments going on at once in the mix like full bands and stuff. Would you mind doing a mix video for basic singer/song writers, with just like, acoustic guitar, vocals, maybe some piano and strings? That would be cool to see mixing in that perspective. Thanks and keep up the great videos!
How do these concepts apply to panning in 5.1 Surround? Anything to keep in mind?
Try it. I've tried it and it works well. Experiment with it, even though it might seem scary at first (which is what I still get sometimes). IMO, it only really works with relatively small-footprint sounds. Like pads and leads (mostly pads) are going to be everywhere (left-center-right) and you can try panning everything else (besides the bass and kick).
Whoa! Best mix video ever! Was just thinking bout this prob yesterday! Thnx boss
this was such a great video looking forward to next week. I've read about this and heard about but didn't understand it till today like right now thanks so much gram!!!
Thank you very much. Now, my question is could this information apply to Jazz music? Thank you again for your help. I mostly use Piano, guitar, bass, drums, strings, and congos for my songs I write.
GREAT tutorial, Graham!!!!!!!!!! Thank you!!!! Looking forward to part 2!!
Alot of people do it, apparent somebody somewhere teaches it. Personally, I don't routinely pan ANYTHING 100% (or even equal amounts) left and right. I save the 90-100% range for certain things that I want to get a listener's instant attention (sound bytes, sound effects, eerie harmonies, spoken phrases, etc). By reserving that space only for certain things of infrequent or one-shot presence, you virtually guarantee it's noticability. Just my pref, tho, your mileage may vary.
You are correct. The idea is also that the majority of club systems that EDM music will be played through will be mono, so all of the key elements of the track need to basically be straight down the middle so they aren't lost on a mono system. Also tracks being pressed to vinyl NEED to be mono below about 100Hz otherwise the needle skips..
Love your videos man! Keep 'em coming rly helpful tricks etc.
for me this was quite a step up. Thanks for sharing!
You said panning creates width but from what I learned panning is only left and right and delays create width but only up to about 30ms difference from side to side, then you start hearing the delay as a delay. Hence why people delay one guitar slightly to create a bigger wider sound
Gold. I'll have to go in and re-review my mixes. Great stuff! Thanks.
Great video yet again. I'm looking forward to my mixing session on Friday. I've been getting really inspired from your videos and your podcast with Joe. The one thing I'm going to try and keep in mind is to take some chances and not play things safe. After all it's my art and I can't do any wrong.
heres the thing that always confuses me.
if you pan hard left, what happens when you make the mix mono? does the sound disappear like it would if you made it too wide?
ExCeLLeNT InDeeD ... Cannot Wait for the Information in Part2 when I watch ...
haha i love this guy, serious video that made me laugh and learn, just subbed
Does the LCR panning method carry over well to electronic music?
if you do lcr panning how earth do you pan toms?
i would like to see how this would be applied in EDM. i rarely notice a song that has a hard panned anything, aside from delays
Why do some tracks have 2 panning knobs? Also why is the meter showing a left signal while it is panned hard right? (Strings)
Hard panning so much stuff seems crazy to me. This approach definitely worked with this guitar led example; I think this is partly because you have multiple guitar sounds that have a wide frequency spectrum that overlap each other. But would this work with more clinical electron sounds for instance that have a lot of frequency separation?
AMAZING video. thanks so much! when's the next one coming out :D?
Looking forward to part 2, thanks Graham :)
once again another straight to the point practical brilliant video thanks for all you do with your vidz dude .
Great video. Direct real time changes that we can apply. Thanks for sharing the knowledge and keep up the good work.
Thanks for sharing Great stuff! Happy X-Mas Day
That's always my biggest mixing issue to LCR or not to LCR - how much Stereo and how little? Pain...
Great stuff man. I learned a lot. Going for the part 2 now you got new sub!
When is part 2 coming? Awesome video, your presentation is so smooth. and of course very useful. thanks!
Thanx the Lord for you!!!! Because they are a lot of other RUclips channel that try what you do, but they are not as (Blessed) at communicating as you are.. So keep up the Great service to all...p.s I guarantee something Great Financially would appear in your near future.
You have taught me something. I liked that. Thank you!
this video helps so much... i cant wait for next week!!
@recordingrevolution: At first you had things that were stereo but then slammed them to the left or right. How do you choose which goes where? I
This was great! Just the answer I was looking for!
This kind of tutorial are very useful, it visualizes sounds...
What is this song and how can i get it?
This are excellent instructions. It strikes me that the 'LCR' paradigm is how much of Alternative Rock achieves that "stark" sound. I've always been trained in the more "rainbow" method you spoke of and it's time for me to try LCR.
J Oliver Hazley The Beatles can help you with ideias :)
Early in my production career(as a teenager on 4 track and later with early versions of Cubase) i tried the Beatles way. I found it drastic and ridiculous. The reasons George Martin got away with it were simple. Stereo was new. (Remember, most of the versions we're hearing from the 80's on, were never heard then...rarely at best). They seemed to separate the tracks with little thought as to practicality. The main reason those ramshackle stereo mixes worked were...it's the freaking Beatles. Period. It doesn't work for Mortals.
Yeah, that makes sense, never thought that way..
Yeah and today's listeners expect high quality
Reverb as well applies a feeling of depth. In real life, the further something is, the more reverb there will be on it. Just being lower in volume won't create the complete illusion of distance.
Thank you so much for this tutorial i learned something crucial here!
Loved this video! Thanks so much graham!
Hello, in "Mixing Audio" of Roey Izhaki, the author says that you need to prevent "W" mix (only hard left, hard right and center panning) . It seems they don't take advantage of the full panoramic and Roey calls them "stereo spread imbalance" with "lacking areas". Another quote about this :"It's like having three adjacent players missing from a row of trumpets players" To him, it's a big deficiency. It's contradictory with what you say. Something to reply anyone ?
Really useful! Please keep them coming.
i'm so glad i watched this, my panning sucked!!!
Anyone who is into this check out David Gibson.
The Art Of Mixing - David Gibson
Hi Graham! I was curious how you record your distorted guitars. They sound nice and silky. The distortion doesnt sound muddy...
Do you think you can do hard panning in electronic music? Taking into consideration that clubs usually have mono systems...
most daws have a mono mixdown option, so you can do all the fancy panning and if you were to play at a club with a mono system you can just use the mono mixdown
Then it might be good to mix in mono or check your mix in mono so nothing gets out of phase.
That is where you need to do research, honestly look up statistics on this kind of stuff. Where are people listening most? There car, clubs, etc.. You need to find statistically where most of your audience listens and that will guide whether LCR or mono is better. I am only saying this because I don't listen to much electronic music. I do know however mid side eq is popular in dance.
Didn't you just answer your own question?
The only thing I would say with regards hard L&R panning is in headphones it sounds really weird. The brain is designed to hear the time delay and volume difference between a single signal hitting each ear. If a signal reaches one ear and not the other it confuses the brain. I notice it a lot if I monitor a dry signal hard panned in headphones, sending a small amount to a mono centered reverb or just pulling it in by one click gets rid of this confusing effect.
Sos draw my attention to this.
Have you done a video on what a bad mix sounds like? I know it's kind of subjective, but I think it could be helpful.
This may just be your best vid.
simple but so magical !! thanks a lot !
A thing about edm tracks is that tracks are made to be playable in huge PAs with minimum distortion/quality loss between them, regarding a certain amount of homogeneity. It might be weird if had heavy bass paned to one side.
In today's "concert style", the songs would clash too much.
Hey there,
In those acoustic songs that you have in your videos, i can totally think of what the mix would sound like with a professional touch, but in electronic music, is that possible too? because in EDM i have never heard a song that "jumps" to me. Is it that EDM songs arent set to be out of the box? Or havent i heard a really well mixed electronic song yet?
My man, read David Gibsons The Art of Mixing. This is his main idea. Visualising the mix like this. Good book.
how many vocals did you record to make it sound like that? And witch plugins?.I like the way it sounds.I want my hip hop vocals to sound like that.I subscribed, I love the tutorial and thank you for your time.I'll be waiting for your response soon.my name is Omar.
The rainbow effect - guilty. It seems counterintuitive to pan hard left/right since, I think, we have the wrong paradigm when it comes to mono/stereo in the recording process.
for a better listening experience. And as for a lead guitar with no vocals, I'd let it take center stage along with the kick. Just make sure the kick and snare aren't ducking under it. Again, that will take some practice - considering every song is different. Hopefully this helps, and remember... this is just a guide. Do what sounds a feels right to you!
oh I forgot to mention I love the track man is sounded beautiful.
I'll keep that in mind. Is that phrase a running joke / meme from the movie tropic thunder?
whats the artists and song name?
man i never would have thought of that. thanks!
Reverend Eslam Making things pop out of the box i guess
This was eye opening, Grant! Thank you!
PS: I've heard some people say that if you pan guitars 100% left or right, you risk losing them in car speakers. Do you think that's true?
thanks for this Graham=) You're a hero =) I've learned a lot from your videos =)
Thanks you for the tips...Lester.
Isn't panning dangerous if you do it to much? When you got mono speakers there will be some sounds you can't hear anymore..
you shouldnt really be mixing without studio monitors or adequate headphones
I think this idea is great. I really like your song. Where can I find it? :)
for comparison: 5:51 vs 13:15
Even Graham's unmixed versions sound better than my mixed and mastered song blobs!
I totally disagree with LCR - it means making L&R spots in mono and overloads the bus which means lower volume and hence a weaker mix. Things that go outside the speakers rely on negative waveforms in the opposite channel i.e. Outside right needs -left to do this - See Jimi's EXP on Axis from 1967! Its better to think of your band in a room or space and set them out, rather like you would an orchestra.
So which DAW's have you tried, when you judge me like this =) ???
Great stuff keep up the good work !!!!
The examples you showed were thorough, but if you stick to LCR strictly, at some point I feel like your going to run into issues where frequencies start stacking on each other too much, depending on the amount of channels your panning, or am I wrong... just a thought, any advice is welcomed for sure..
this gave me some motivation.
another great video, also awesome song by the way
This guy is 🔥🔥
Excellent video and explanation!