Stop Panning Like This 

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You are right and to add on the LCR concept. Make sure to balance the volume after hard pan because things can get weird as you pan hard. This is because volume increases as you pan.

hey Joe, just to thank you for all the tips. Some past videos on EQ helped me soo much that i can't even believe that my voice was soo muddy all this time. We just get used to listen to our own mic and don't really know whats happening. Just taking off that low 80-hz and that whistle and also the 240/250hz boomy areas changed my life.

Thank you so much for this! Your message reminded me of a time back in 2009 when I first learned how to pan and heard my song being played on the radio. I couldn't hear my lead guitar that was panned to the left, and I got frustrated. However, one of my mentor producers told me that some playback systems do not have stereo, and I don't have to worry about mixing for those mono kinds of systems. He added that I should be real and make my mix as I want it to be. It is true that many mixers worry about panning totally left or right, but it's not always necessary.

Probably worth mentioning... the listening experience with LCR is better on speakers where the sound from left speaker will also get into the right ear (which is actually stereo). With headphones, it's actually two mono channels to be precise, so it can seem a bit too panned. With headphones you can do something like - hard Left would be actually 80% left, 20% right, so it's bit more glued. That will also depend on the parts played, if we have doubled guitar, there's no problem of LCR at all. Of course, final decision should be made with listening.

Everything sounds so much more alive brother!! Holy...thank you God for this revelation

these videos resonate with me man, its gold

One thing to keep in mind is if you decide to do any M/S processing, LCR panning may complicate that process.

SUCH A GREAT CONCEPT,, THANKS JOE!

Thanks again for all your videos! Especially these days when so many people listen on phone speakers. Anything less sounds mono.

As always, great information Joe presented in an easy-to-understand to-the-point video. You mentioned toward the end of your video that bass and kick drum always go up the middle. I was thinking that you could do a follow-up video using a song that you produced with multiple instruments and vocals where you demonstrate the preferred location (L, C, or R) of each instrument and vocal in Step 2 (static mix) of your mixing process. This would include explaining why you chose the particular location for each instrument or vocal aside from the fact that your goal is to spread and balance the panning.

I think, with the exception of drums, LCR panning is a good general rule of thumb for the main elements of a song. But for drums, and more background elements, I think filling in the space often will create a better result

Thank you @Joe Gilder for sharing this video. since 2021 that I had a studio artist STUDIO 5 until now that I am still not satisfied to know another way in mixing.

This is great video .. Thank you

As always a tones of useful info

Good concept. I do agree however about not when drum panning and some m/s applications. I'm trying it out tomorrow on some tracks. Thanks for the tip. As usual great information.

Joe, you are one hilarious geek! 5:47 "Ohhh I'm..Scared!" Thanks for all you do. Your "for purchase" classes are great. It's probably time I review.

I've been doing this more lately on my mixes and I like the results. In most cases it works remarkably well, but I do find that there are certain instances where going all the way out doesn't make sense, so I'll go part way out to keep things more balanced. It's situational, and depends on the song. I also apply the same thinking to my live mixing approach.

Man you're the GOAT

Thank you for the Info on Recording I Am Working on Some Songs Now !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love Duel Mode, it allow me to take a stereo synth and separate the high - and low-end information and I get alot of energy but I only do this in usually one section of the arrangement.

I just tried this on a mix I'm working on and it sounds quite a bit better now. I added another 2 "buckets" L50 and R50 since I produce electronic music where the arrangements are less conventional, but with this approach my panning decisions are much simpler and my mix sounds wider. Thanks! Is it me or Joe is showing left and right from the viewers perspective? Very considerate of him😄

I mostly record the house concerts that we have. So I will pan the instruments and vocals by the way they are standing on the stage. We do mostly bluegrass and singer songwriters so I will put the bass up the middle and the lead singer with the harmony singers panned left and right depending on where they're standing on the stage. Whoever is on the left side of the stage from the audience perspective I will pan hard left and the person on the right gets panned hard right. I do the same with the instruments. I don't listen to much modern music but what I do occasionally hear has no stereo separation at all but maybe that's because I'm too old at 70. Thank you so much for all your great advice I love watching your videos and learning.

this is a game changer, thanks, I was fed that half circle with instruments at varying degrees. This put that to rest.

Slight pans can keep competing, overlapping frequencies in tracks away from each other a bit, too, however...

Great example is Tenille Townes - Coming together - the separation of the two guitars just sounds great

Haven’t been doing this long but hard left n right seems instinctive to me, plus obviously centre, I may pan slightly off centre to create room between parts

Been experimenting with LCR the last few months. Seemed counter intuitive at first but it makes my mixes a lot less muddy. Instruments and voices are much clearer

Thanks for the video Joe. I found it very interesting. I'm not a big fan of LCR panning, although I hear it used a lot. Panning multiple things to the same place can be problematic sonically by not giving each sound enough space. If you separate a kick and bass by just a couple of points of pan you can hear each one better. Not panning anything other than lead vocal dead centre gives that vocal more space. The end result is that you spend less time trying to make things heard in your mix because you use panning to put them in a place where they can be heard. 

I never pan more than one sound to the same place. I use the whole stereo space to mix in. I don’t want to just hear things left centre and right. I want to hear them from everywhere. 

My reference for mixing is anything from Radiohead’s OK Computer. 

 Personally I find it very odd to hear a piano in a mix that is panned hard left and right. I don’t want to hear it as if my head is inside the lid of a grand piano. Let's be honest, there is never just one way to do things. Mixing is an art form and you can do it however you want to. There is no right and wrong, just personal preferences. If you like your mixes, they are good mixes.

I find LCR is fine & simple enough if the mix is sparse but it becomes more tricky when mixes get dense. Often I will hard pan a stereo pair of distorted rhythm guitars and also have clean guitars in the mix, and I find that pulling the cleaner tones closer to center fill the L-R space better. Ditto for dense orchestral arrangements where I tend to pan less aggressively to better mimic a "typical" orchestra seating arrangement.

LCR is a good strategy. Not necessarily the best or only.

Itès surprising to me that people are more timid than extreme with the panning. But still very informative video. Also, curious about what mic that is that youère using.

As someone who primarily does live sound reinforcement, monofest is an unfortunate reality. My church has a long narrow seating arrangement, so snless you are in the front 2 rows stereo sound is completely covered. I'm currently rewiring it for stereo possibilities, not to move any instruments/vocals particularly far from center, but to gain access to stereo choruses, delays, and reverbs either onboard the mixer or from the guitars/keyboards.

I typically make three duplicates of guitar tracks and pan each one different degrees of LRC and then pull the fader back on the ones not hard L or R till I fill the listening perspective. I feel we can only process so much info in one part of our perspective. By using all the space we can process more of the sound.

The LCR is also a legacy from the first analog consoles around the 60s that had only those three options. Thought it was worth mentioning.

I normally allocate voice and instruments to 3 - 4 zones across the spectrum and I’ve only used 90 - 100% when I need something to stand out. I can’t bring myself to put the vocal, kick and bass all at 0%. But the concept of LCR to test a wide spread is interesting and certainly worth talking about.

i like to double things, so i put a guitar on the center and than the same on the left for example, makes the sound more wide

I typically pan a mono instrument track either hard L or R and then pan a slightly delayed (25-30 ms) and attenuated copy of that track somewhere in the opposite direction. It allows the instrument to emerge mostly from one speaker, for better reproduction, but also gives it a sense of space due to the timing cues introduced by the delayed track

Apart from the case of a duet, would you also sometimes pan other sounds every so slightly to help with separation between two sounds that occupy similar ish areas? (This is common advice I've heard before) Because if you can only hard pan to separate, then you lose the ability to surprise the listener with wider moments in the mix (switching from a mono-ish state to hard panned elements that come in, e.g. in the chorus). Great video thanks!

I generally agree with this but find some elements like background vocals or even dual guitars don't always work great in LCR. If you only have 1 harmony for instance it can sound lopsided to one side but gets lost in the center. High passing the BG vocal bus in the sides can help too for headphones.

I like the "70 style" panning a lot for guitars, guitar dry hard left and guitar reverb only hard right (VH I for example). But I can't get that to sound as good as those records in my mixes. I always feel I miss some punch.

Love it Joe, I find myself constantly duplicating guitar parts and panning hard right left mainly because I'm creating space centre for lead vocal, daft question, should I be recording guitar parts individually? Also I pump bass guitar down the middle, is this what you do?

I get your concept here as many people are afraid to pan to the extremes, but I don’t agree with everything being hard left, hard right, or center. The spaces in between are very important in a mix canvas as well. If it’s a basic drums, bass, two guitars, vocals band sure…..drums spread in stereo, one gtr left, one right, bass and vox in the middle works great. Now start adding backing vocals, keys, horns, etc. when your mixing 48 tracks of audio and putting everything on top of each other spatially things get messy really quickly. I like to use all the spaces. Often times I’ll use effects to widen an instruments reach. Maybe a slap delay panned opposite the dry signal or a reverb. I’m not saying LCR panning is wrong since I don’t believe anything is wrong. Hell nowadays even out of phase and stereo panning kick drums is acceptable since we no longer have to worry about that cutting needle jumping off the vinyl. Lol. But LCR panning to me is just as limiting as not widening things to the extreme sides. By the way nothing widens your stereo imaging like several sources being recorded with MS miking .

And it still sounds good when you check it in mono?

I don't think you should be fully committed to LCR imo. My toms are 60% L and 75% R and sometimes I'll put a guitar part around 55% to a side depending on how many instruments are playing.

Hi Joe, another great video. Quick question, most of my recording are me playing all the instruments, the usual drums, bass, guitars and keys. Would you typically pan certain elements of the drum kit to reflect how they would be set up. Obviously kick and snare down the middle but would you pan the toms from left to right, and possibly hi hat off to the left, that sort of thing?

Hey Joe, nice vid. Do you ever find that narrowing a drum kit a bit helps to solidify the mix? I use almost exclusive LCR but do sometimes think that having the kit stretched all the way L to R weakens the image - looks great when you view the panorama on a meter but sounds more together at about 70 - 80% width - possibly related to pan law I guess as I tend to balance my kit then adjust pan on a group channel?

I feel as though this doesn’t happen much in metal production. Guitars, vocals, snare, bass, and kick absolutely. But things like Toms have to feel as though they actually roll around the stereo space in those middle spaces. Further, they should match the overheads

Thanks for your video! Question though, are the Studio One panners stereo panners or are they more of a subtractive balance control?

This works great if you have 3 or more tracks of the same instrument, but something like 2 guitars doesn't translate well to the LCR model. Plus, when I think of hard panning guitars, I immediately think of Van Halen 1 and that's not a mix I aspire to.

Well, I guess I'm wrong. I generally do hard left and right for the guitars, bass, kick and snare right up the middle as well as the lead vocal. But for say organ and piano, I might have tehm panned 50 % either left or right. Also, if I have a bit of a choir for backing vocals, I tend to spread them out.

hey joe where did the Rob Lee Signature set come from ? i had a back up of more than 300 mb of presets and chains i use but for some reason that back up is no where to be found and that was important to me bc that was for me to use if something happened and sure enough after i backed all that up i lost all that ? can presonus please explain why that back up is not in the cloud or on my cloud ? i just want my back up back my presets and my chains which i worked years to build i would appreciate if you could respond or try to help me figure out what happened thank you for your time

How do you like to pan a mix with only one acoustic and one vocal? Both down the center? Or vocals in the center and acoustic guitar slightly off to one side?

LCR feels like standing right in the middle of the band, where more central-based panning sounds like hearing the band from the middle row of the audience.

I like to go between TIMID and LCR

How do you go about 1 vocal + 1 acoustic guitar? Sometimes I like doing what you said about duets. I just move them slightly, like 1-3 points, to get them out of each other's way. Do you have a different approach for situations like these?

..hi Joe, in LCR how do you mix synths pads plucks?leave as they are or add some stereoizer plugin?regards

There is a major pitfall in LCR which is that many times a listener is hearing only one spaeker or one side more. So any element hard panned will not be properly heard. This is why a mix must first be made in mono mode with spatial effects muted. The trick is to switch back & forth (& use a Gon'z'o meter LOL). The more tracks in a project the greater the stereo image challenge will be. I agree that counterbalancing is vital & this applies equally not only to LCR. As a special effect hard L or R is useful. It will always depend on the song but even so, its rare that any listener will hear music from a centralised point! So I would always be awate of a) frequency masking 'racoon effect'', b) comb filtering (not applicable to the bald!) & mono drop out. Mid to side EQ should then be checked for overlap or frequency range trimming/adjustment. Notching/multiband or intelligent eq etc So beware o🎉f LCR in any default sense. Only my opinion of course but i err on the side of caution!

Hello Joe! Last year I purchased your mixing course. Just a quick question. What do you recommend (PC) for a cpu as far as the processor size and if it needs to be cooled? Just your preference or I should ask what do you use

Joe, where do you usually put the snare/cymbals and the backing vocals?

Joe! What do you think about mixing in mono from end to end, and saving panning until just before the export to master?

❤️❤️

Hi, Joe. 🙂 Have you ever heard of Voodoo People by The Prodigy? I was listening to it last night and it DEFINITELY sounds like they used LCR panning in this one. Please listen to it and tell me what you think. Btw, love your videos, man.🙂

Hey Joe, the LCR concept is fairly simple to understand for mono sound sources (Vox, Guitars, Bass, Piano...). I understand that you gave the "Electric piano" (Rhodes style sound) example for instruments that spread allover the LCR field and your solution for it is also reasonable but I'm curious about how would you deal with specific electronic PAD synths that (by design) spread sonically allover the stereo field (evolving and moving in time). Dealing with one instance may be easy, just letting it naturally "Stereo-Centered" but what if your have several of those in the mix (electronic ambient or orchestral music - like Vangelis)? Would you treat them all alike, meaning, let them naturally "Stereo-Centered" so they can naturally LCR spread (all around)? Thanks for sharing. Stay safe.

So drum panning then?

Hey Joe, LCR is nice but what about phase issues? Also in mono, like from a phone, everything wide disappears.

Hi, what about rack toms and floor toms?

I've been doing it for several years now, and it definitely works and makes the song fuller while cleaning up the mix a bit. When you hear your favorite songs and listen to, say, Jimmy Page's guitar hard panned left, you realise this is the way to go.

When choosing panning references, people should realize good LCR didn't become universal until around the mid-80s. It definitely existed before then (early equipment could _only_ handle LCR), but it was very hit or miss in terms of professionalism, so you need to be careful in your selection if you're referencing the 1960s or 1970s. This is especially true for people who focus on classic rock, since that's the time period most references will be from.

LCR is a engineer and producer preference. I do mostly hip-hop and RnB and the one song I can come off hand remembering is "Bout It" by Master P but it was a terrible mixup anyway

Dear Prudence. Beatles white album ,,,,Amazing amount to learn::: Listen with headphones .

So, in that case, does the pan law (0dB, -3dB, -6dB) have any influence, and how do you deal with it?

LCR mixes are dull to my ears. Having wide pans is good and all but having no in between pans make it sound empty to me. You need a happy middle ground. LCR some stuff but in between most is my approach.

I actually prefer the timid panning. It's true that sometimes it's good to do it the LCR way especially when you have instruments that play in the same part of the spectrum, but in general I am not sure that's the best rule to stick to.

👍 👍

HI Joe, But ¿ what about the separation between the soft and the hard parts of the song? . Using only LCR, there will be no difference or movement.

I thought I was an animal. I love things hard panned because I like to hear everything. I remember having BALANCE when I was I kid and going Left or Right to hear the different guitars I'm not a mixer, but I have my own songs and I'm always "What the hell, I don't care... I'm panning LEFT, RIGHT or CENTER. I even hate when the virtual drums don't have panned cymbals. It's good to see that I'm not an animal

Instrumentation dictates this. IF there are a lot of instruments some LCR and some in between will work fine but again its not a hard fast rule. LCR works very well but experimentation and balance depending on the instrumentation must be taken into account. If the instrumentation and arrangement suck then no type of panning will help. Remember most phones are a mono speaker and ear buds or headphones are not even true stereo. I like that Joe is offering an approach that some may never have tried and should. Experiment with your song and listen to all the possible panning positions. Your ears will tell you what is best for your arrangement.

I tried guitar hard right and reverb for it hard left and the reverb doesn't show up until you bring the guitar in a bit (reverb still hard panned). Why is this? ( using Reaper)

On drums pan everything in the middle except for overheads. Overheads should be hard left and hard right

L and R panning 50% works for me on electric guitars, hard right and hard left sound way too away for my taste, it's like guitars sound weak

I have to disagree with you on this one. I know a lot of pros who don’t do this, me included.

soooo what about the new old and shiny Dolby Atmos...

would you apply this to drum toms?

🤟🙏🏻

I've found some situations where binaural positioning with delays (200 to 500 microseconds) is far more effective than level panning. On a live bluegrass recording, if my mando is far stage-left, It will go to the right at unity and the left with a 500uS delay and a 6db/octave LPF cornered at about 5Khz.

but your faders DID change when you switched you can clearly see several faders increase. was this accidental?

Panning is not so much guesswork. Why should I limit myself in this way?

Just been reading a book written by a pro and he says not to do this. Some things may work well but why pan a stereo track hard left or right ?

better to pan like 75 percent either way rather than 100.. for less volume loss in mono

It is important to keep in mind that your mix still has to be listenable. Hard LCR panning may sound great with a fancy speaker setup or nice monitors, but its a total pain in the ass to listen to in the car, with headphones, or with earbuds. There's a balance, and there's a reason why nobody pans like this anymore.

Old desks didn’t have panners, just a switch: LCR.

Am I wrong or is this not even true for your reference track? The guitar is loud on the left - yes, but it is also happening in the right side. Doesn't that mean it is not lcr mixed?

Devil's advocate : Center means 100% both speakers. Slightly off center does not mean only that narrow band between center and "timid" panning point. It means only slightly less than 100% on one speaker but still 100% on the other?

Oh hell naw I’ve always thrown guitars all the way to the sides

I’m just gonna give up at this point 😂

Mr. Joe Gilder: I play a lot of Flam on the snare drum, could you please tell me how to make the 「 Flam notation 」 and 「 Drag notation 」 on the sheet music? The version I am using is "Studio One 6.5 Professional”. Looking forward to your guidance. Thank you very much ~ ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OhfjKnyk5-0.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-t2Tq7uKs4G8.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-i4A3EK7HpkU.html

I actually prefer the "timid" panning. Hard panning everything demands splitting attention of my ears and I don't enjoy the song as a complete work as much.

All good stuff but I would add one more thing. Bass and kick can be cheated a bit to help with separation. If you just pull the kick 5 to the right and bass 5 to the left, they still sound up the middle but it can create some space for each. But this I would only use if everything else I did wasn't doing it for me. Also, the bottom line, creatively, anyway, is do what sounds good to you. For example on the album A Live One by Phish, you can distinctly hear the drums on the right, the bass just a bit left, the guitar just left of that and the keys on the far left. So, some albums do do this with great success. But, hey, if you are looking to sound like everyone else, yeah, do just LCR.

One thing I noticed: the guitar played on the left, but I heard some of the reverb on the right, which had an interesting effect. Thinking about his, especially how PCM audio is, LCR could give a bandwidth boost. It's hard to tell how much. 16-bit PCM Stereo is often two completely separate 16-bit mono tracks. If audio is on the center, it means it lives on both tracks. If an instrument lives on one track, it takes away competition for bandwidth away from the other track.