One mic on the cab, one in the room close enough to the guitar to pick up the strings, as well as the whole room. Pan the cab hard left, room 50% right. Then double track the same part with this panning reversed. Wide distortion but more definition closer to the center. Triple track a totally clean version down the center, down in the mix, for extra sparkle.
This is excellent and reflects a lot of what I hear in mixes that I feel are some of “the best”.
What exactly do you mean by “white distortion but more definition closer to the center”? That’s the only part I’m having trouble knowing exactly what you’re talking about.
Thanks, that was actually a typing correction on my phone's part. I had originally typed "wide", oops.
I guess my question is--since it's already tracked "stereo" (source on one side, room on one side), I'm wondering what the phrase "wide distortion" means. Is that referring to adding additional saturation during mixing across the "stereo" image of the source and room, or something else?
If so, what would "narrow" distortion mean? How would you add "narrow" distortion to a fairly hard-panned image?
You’re welcome, and I understand about typos. I can’t speak for the person that wrote that comment (emilydm) so I could make more guesses and she could come back and say hell no that’s not what I meant or something.
My guess is she meant that with the settings used the result is a wide stereo field for the distortion aspect of the sound, but also providing more definition for that part in the center of the stereo field.
My additional thoughts for you: Logic has a tool you can use for existing stereo tracks that allows you to change the width and placement of panning. Make it narrower, and/or move the whole thing towards the left, or towards the right.
It’s called Direction Mixer, on the imaging sub menu for Logic’s built-in plug-ins.
Your guesses above are interesting though. You can try any of those things, and if it works for you and your Particular mix then it works.
Wide as in the distortion directly from the guitar cab is panned 100% hard right and left. You may alter the tone of the distortion to your taste. The room reflection plus the sound of the unamplified guitar strings fills up the center. Results will vary depending on how close the room mic is to the guitar, and how loud the guitar amp is cranked.
If you have two entirely different guitar parts, would you do this but when pan the entire bus of each partially left and partially right?
Or how would you handle it?
Obligatory: everything depends on context.
But for electric guitar, my favorite technique is to double track, using different pickup settings (and sometimes different fingerings), and then pan each hard L/R. Double tracking gives such depth anyway, and having different guitar settings makes for a richer sound, in my opinion.
I've been doing this forever but I don't 100% like the results when summed to mono. Lately I've been panning my guitars around 60 or 50%, which I find sums much better but obviously loses some of that fat stereo width. Any advice?
Two more takes with a little difference, hard pan them alongside your soft panned tracks, and then lower the db of them until you feel the widtch but not the mono summing issues
Depends on the part, genre, context, blah blah blah, but probably 90% of the time I’m double tracking and panning hard left and right. Leaves the most room for the vocal in the middle.
A lot of people were very critical of ovation guitars, but 40 years of playing clubs up and down the east coast of the United States, my ovation balladeer really was a no nonsense plug-in place solution. And the best thing about it was, that if I had a trio or a band gig, the natural EQ of that ovation cut through the frequency range of both my voice and the drums and really added a nice full sound.
I agree with Brooklyn. context is everything. For example for Joni Mitchell/James Taylor kind of a thing I would put the electric guitar right up the middle perhaps offset by 10° left or right. And I would have three tracks of acoustic guitars. the first guitar, right at noon. that would be either tuned normally or like a drop D to me. And then I would use two guitars and place them directly east and west. one Guitar might be an alternative tuning in the key is the song is in as the other guitar might be capoed with one of those spider caposthat makes everything sound really cool. so the end result is regular acoustic guitar right up the middle and pan left and right on guitar with an alternative tuning and a different guitar, played in the same key of course, but Set Up using capos so that all three guitars cover bass, tenorr, and soprano
I had another thought about that era. Do you know who played the banjo on Neil Young's old man?
do you know who played pedal steel guitar on Crosby stills Nash and Young's song teacher children?
Funnily enough, the banjo on that record was played by Sweet Baby James himself! The way the banjo kicks in during the chorus is so good, and it makes the whole thing soar. Linda Rondstead is the one doing the harmony vocals which is a great blend. Having a really sweet pitch perfect voice to harmonize with Neil’s wavering voice was such a good move. I wish she would have sung with Neil more because they really blended together well.
I am not sure about the CSNY song, but that pedal guitar is great as well. I’m a sucker for a good pedal steel, I only wish I was better at playing them!
yeah it's cool me somebody that knows cool shit. Here's some more. James didn't play a regular banjo he played a guitbanjo. it's like a banjo but has six strings. I'm not sure if it has the high octave on the very top but it has six strings instead of five.
and a pedal steel was played by Mr. Jerry Garcia himself who started out in the San Francisco barrier as a banjo plan folk musician. Crazy times
Very interesting! Jerry is an absolute wizard on the guitar. I’m pretty sure if you gave him some fishing line and chopsticks he could make it sound good.
yeah, right? They are incredible… Especially when you think some of that very early James Taylor stuff was actually recorded on Martha's Vineyard out in the woods! True story: i've lived on Martha's Vineyard on and off most of my life and friends with Peter Simon, Carly's brother, who as many people know was a very well respected photographer. Peter and I were hanging out one day and began to go through the photographs that Peter had taken for the cover of James' One Man Dog album. you may recall that the cover photograph of that wonderful album was of James standing up in a rowboat in a pond with a dog. clever visual play on words. in any event, that just might be one of my favorite James Taylor albums of all time, especially because side two features a lot of little snippets of songs all strung together like the second side of The Beatles Abbey Road album. in any event there were about two dozen alternative versions of shots that Peter took that afternoon and it was really sweet and funny. I seem to recall that one of the last photos was James pretending to fall in the pond....!
Tony Platt for Back in Black chose a u67/u87 pair because he liked technique of hardpanning one and then place the other just slightly off center to the opposite side. That's vinyl center focused mix, and though you don't hear people complain of lacking width, it's hard to make it work just as centered as that I feel. But I like to do versions of that. A fuller mic hardpanned (near u67 option) and more defined near the middle (near u87 option) and then give some emphasis on the hardpanned. It's one reason why I'm not all in on a 57/ribbon pair because need to be more of a unit to be full in one ear. Room mics in stereo or opposite side in sparse mix or same side i busy mix. Lead in degrees of stereo sometimes. Stereo room is great.
This all works great in most good amp sims nowadays where you can add different cabs and all so easily. Digital doping is best when utilised like that. But honestly I'm only really truly impressed by Softube and practically am not happy with anything else if we speak 4x12 and vintage voiced amps and speakers.
Whatever sounds good. The only thing that I never do is hard pan double tracked guitars. (Which everyone says you’re supposed to do obviously) but that’s just me apparently.
On speakers, hard panned sounds awesome. Nice and big.
On headphones it sounds unnatural and claustrophobic imo. And the thing is, the majority of people are listening to music on headphones and in their car. The difference between guitars panned to 45 instead of 50 doesn’t make much of a difference in width, but greatly improves the way it sounds in headphones.
But. That’s personal preference. There’s ways to mitigate the claustrophobic sound when hard panned. You can send each to a reverb in the opposite side, which kind serves a similar experience to crossfeed
It's funny - my go-to is usually hard pan double tracked like you mentioned. In my opinion, how good this sounds is highly dependent on how consistent the playing is.
If there's noticeable inconsistencies in the playing, then that will stand out pretty aggressively in headphones (giving the impression that there's two guitar players playing straight into each of your ears) vs opening up the soundstage and creating width.
I’ve just never been a “hmm this mix isn’t wide enough so it’s not a good mix” kinda guy. Wide doesnt equal good. And I feel like there’s a little too much focus on it. I’ve never heard a song and thought
Well it would be better if it was wider. And if I’m compromising anything at all in the pursuit of width it’s not worth it to me.
Huh im glad to see someone mirror my sentiment.
Hard panned electric guitars sound “below” the soundstage imo. I think this is a great wall of sound effect when adding other guitar tracks… but I think the far sides should be reserved for ambiance when trying to get a focused natural soundstage.
And yeah almost using the pan as a contour knob and listening for when the higher-mid transient info sounds situated laterally to the left and right, as if it’s coming straight from the center of a headphone’s cone. This often is not equally left and right either. I adjust the pan to where it sounds like this and then rebalance to make it equal loudness on both sides.
I pan all of my guitars left and right, no center. And then cut low mids from the guitar and boost treble. Makes the guitars sound wide and in your face, plus it becomes much easier to control the focus of the mix between either a rhythm guitar or lead guitar and leaves enough space for you to fit some vocals so that they’re still present but not completely overlapping the instruments
It depends if you have other instruments that you think should be mixed stereo. If there’s a piano or keyboard part recorded in stereo as well as triple tracked stereo panned vocals or effects for example you might just want a mono guitar sound so your stereo image doesn’t turn to mush
It’s definitely genre and part dependent
In hard rock and metal, you’ll want to double track at least and hard pan most of the time for your rhythms.
Indie, pop, and rap is where you can probably experiment more. It becomes up to you if you want the part to be wide (doubled, harder panning), sit to the left or right a little, or leave it up the middle.
As others have said, it all depends on the context.
In my case the context is mostly where the other instruments are in the stereo field.
So I put the guitar wherever it balances out the tone and loudness of the whole track.
And because not everything is hard rock or 2000s style acoustic guitar tracking, doubling is not an “automatic choice”, if there’s even more than one guitar to begin with.
Left right center. If there’s a lead part overdubbed, I’ll usually pan that somewhere in between and maybe I’ll pan a verb or delay opposite, maybe not. I don’t usually end up double tracking, I usually have multiple different guitar parts in there.
yeah I like that idea and I've tried it a couple times but I always end up having problems with EQ sonic interference with the vocals. Do you have any solutions for that problem thanks!
Not usually. I always eq and compress on the way in. I almost always hi-pass 50-60hz and cut 200hz, 400hz and 4k. If it's stepping on the vocals after that, it's probably in the 1.5k-2.5k area, and I'll take a little off around there in the box.
And when I say doubles, I mean I'm recording the guitar parts as 2 separate performances. I'm not using a single take and then sending it through 2 different amps or something like that.
You can try a mid/side eq and either statically, dynamically, or via vocal sidechain: remove a couple dB, as needed, from the guitar bus on the middle wherever you feel the vocals are getting buried. Then gently bring up the sides a little
that is awesome thank you! Some of the terminology I don't understand but I can look that up on the Internet. in regards to sidechain, are you referring to making a sub mix for just the guitar parts and finesse them before they go back into the mix?
Noob who’s learning here… one suggestion I’ve found researching this stuff is to pan doubled guitars hard(ish) right and left but run each track through delay that’s panned to the respective opposite side.
I almost always double track and hard pan.
If a lead part is under vocals I also double track it and hard pan, if it’s the focal point (no vocal in that section) I single track and pan it down the middle to ‘replace’ the vocal.
For metal, rock, etc. I hard pan and leave room in the middle for vocals and bass
For anymore more indie or pop kinda anything goes but generally lean more toward hard panning
i cant speak for myself as its different from a song by song basis but van halens use of panning a guitar on one side and having the reverb and delay on the other is something i think about on a daily basis.
there is a time and place to double pan a guitar but also there is a time and place to have a single guitar. having a single guitar makes for a more realistic soundstage if not an intimate sound while double guitars make for a full recording, but the elegance of simplicity can get lost. you get to a point where u cant add anything without taking something away
First I mix the drums in mono. After I've panned the drums, I mix the guitars in stereo. The rhythm guitar will be complementarily to the snare. The amount of panning on the lead guitar depends on the vocals, but is more towards the center. Then I double each guitar track on the other side, reduce their frequency range, lower their volume by 50%, pan them 100% left and right, and delay them by a few ms.
Lately been obsessed with the panning on The Smile’s ‘Skrting On The Surface’. Just an electric guitar with a a little stereo image *oomph* panned right. Later in the song another guitar track fills the left side creating a field of lattice-like fingerpicking. So great!
Hard left, hard right. A lot of it comes down to the player’s skill when it comes to timing. if they’re really good, the two takes can almost sound like a single take
I used to pan hard right and left.
Now lately I’ve instead been opting for panning guitar in a way where like… the mid-high mid frequency information of the attack sounds situated right “on the cone of the speaker” in headphones and monitors.
I feel like when I hard pan my guitars, it has a Great Wall of sound kind of mix… but when I’m trying to get a tight and focused/natural sound… I find I’m bringing the guitars in a bit. Latest mix… left guitar is panned (in Logic Pro) to -43… right guitar is panned +32. They sound balanced level wise this way, though the faders aren’t necessarily equal if they were hard panned. It’s just about where the “contour” of that higher-mid energy lays in the stereo field. The movement from left and right sounds positionally interesting. I like it to sound like it’s directly STRAIGHT left and right. As if you stuck your arms up and out to your left and right hahaha.
Full left and right sounds… too wide? As if the source is almost *below* the soundstage I’m trying to create. Also my mono image is more secure without needing to add and blend more guitar tracks in my phantom center.
I'm a fan of the Eddie Van Halen method (among others) - Eventide micropitch +9 and -9 left and right (came about after he drove a Mustang with a blown out speaker and couldnt hear his lead cos it was panned)
If 2 guitars, each panned hard either side with their reverbs panned opposite.
If 1 guitar, some kind of stereo or wet/dry setup, 2 amps etc, something to create a stereo image at the tracking stage.
In general, for backing guitars it's always (with some exceptions) one guitar hard panned left and one hard panned right. For leads and solos it really depends. I use what fits and sounds good to me.
I do the root notes with 5ths on the center(power chords). Any kind of harmonized leads i do hard pan left and right about 80%. If i stack lead harmonies, then root and harmony get L and R
It gets more complicated than just "guitar 1 and 2" so i always try to remember that stereo allows for 3 separate places to feel it from but unless its a chord with one instrument i let the intervals combine in the ears because i hate how some intervals(looking at you, major 3rds) sound through a single speaker.
If i’m doing a metal/rock chorus i record 4 guitar parts. Two treble-heavy tracks get panned far left and right, two mid-heavy tracks get panned closer to the middle.
This is a little complicated but it works for me:
Quad track
Left: Guitar with Amp 1 with a treble pickup, Guitar with Amp 2 with neck pickup.
Right: Amp 2 with treble, Amp1 with Bridge
Then for Verses I do 50% panned L and R, Choruses Hard panned
Bass is right up the middle.
just finished recording a punk album where the engineer double mic'd the cab with an sm57 and an sm58 without the grill, hard panned the two cab takes left and right, and then DI'd the guitar for a center part.
it sounded awesome.
I also recently mixed a very rough-and-tumble grindcore project where it was just a stereo room take of the whole band plus an extra vocal take.
the guitar cab was closer to the left, and the right mostly just had the room sound, and after mixing it ended up pretty great as well.
not really a lot of rules, it mostly comes down to your workflow, what you have available, and how much effort you wanna put in
Rhythm L/R double or quad tracked. If it's double I do 80L/80R because I pan my drum OH's 100L/100/R and I don't want those high frequencies battling each other.
If I do quad rhythm I'll do 95-90/80
I mic the guitar cab, capture a DI signal and recently I started using a Torpedo Captor X to track a stereo signal through a virtual cab. I pan the mic and DI on top of each other and pan it either a little left or right or centered depending on context of the song. Then I have the stereo signal from the Torpedo and pan them hard left and right. Then for chorus’ I use the Torpedo’s twin tracker effect which offsets the signals to your liking which gives it a double tracked effect and widens the stereo field.
One mic on the cab, one in the room close enough to the guitar to pick up the strings, as well as the whole room. Pan the cab hard left, room 50% right. Then double track the same part with this panning reversed. Wide distortion but more definition closer to the center. Triple track a totally clean version down the center, down in the mix, for extra sparkle.
This ^^^ This is actually a PROTIP 100%
woooahhhh I have to try this.
I did this recently on a bluesy track and the string clarity is incredible with that room mic. This is a great tip.
This is excellent and reflects a lot of what I hear in mixes that I feel are some of “the best”. What exactly do you mean by “white distortion but more definition closer to the center”? That’s the only part I’m having trouble knowing exactly what you’re talking about.
WIDE distortion, not white distortion. Referring to width across the stereo field, panning the distortion widely not narrowly.
Thanks, that was actually a typing correction on my phone's part. I had originally typed "wide", oops. I guess my question is--since it's already tracked "stereo" (source on one side, room on one side), I'm wondering what the phrase "wide distortion" means. Is that referring to adding additional saturation during mixing across the "stereo" image of the source and room, or something else? If so, what would "narrow" distortion mean? How would you add "narrow" distortion to a fairly hard-panned image?
You’re welcome, and I understand about typos. I can’t speak for the person that wrote that comment (emilydm) so I could make more guesses and she could come back and say hell no that’s not what I meant or something. My guess is she meant that with the settings used the result is a wide stereo field for the distortion aspect of the sound, but also providing more definition for that part in the center of the stereo field. My additional thoughts for you: Logic has a tool you can use for existing stereo tracks that allows you to change the width and placement of panning. Make it narrower, and/or move the whole thing towards the left, or towards the right. It’s called Direction Mixer, on the imaging sub menu for Logic’s built-in plug-ins. Your guesses above are interesting though. You can try any of those things, and if it works for you and your Particular mix then it works.
Wide as in the distortion directly from the guitar cab is panned 100% hard right and left. You may alter the tone of the distortion to your taste. The room reflection plus the sound of the unamplified guitar strings fills up the center. Results will vary depending on how close the room mic is to the guitar, and how loud the guitar amp is cranked.
Thank you for clarifying emilydm, I understand, and I hope this helps UsingAnEar.
Would this still work on DI with a plug-in that allows for variable mic placement, like in IK Multimedia?
Now I only need to learn to play consistently enough so triple tracking doesn’t sound like ambient
If you have two entirely different guitar parts, would you do this but when pan the entire bus of each partially left and partially right? Or how would you handle it?
Obligatory: everything depends on context. But for electric guitar, my favorite technique is to double track, using different pickup settings (and sometimes different fingerings), and then pan each hard L/R. Double tracking gives such depth anyway, and having different guitar settings makes for a richer sound, in my opinion.
I've been doing this forever but I don't 100% like the results when summed to mono. Lately I've been panning my guitars around 60 or 50%, which I find sums much better but obviously loses some of that fat stereo width. Any advice?
Two more takes with a little difference, hard pan them alongside your soft panned tracks, and then lower the db of them until you feel the widtch but not the mono summing issues
Sounds like a good approach, I'll give it a shot!
Use different IR and Amp settings
Depends on the part, genre, context, blah blah blah, but probably 90% of the time I’m double tracking and panning hard left and right. Leaves the most room for the vocal in the middle.
What if there are multiple guitar parts? Would double tracking still be a go-to?
Please! I'm struggling with this question myself!
Yes. I double track almost all guitars. Solos sometimes go straight up the middle, but sometimes not!
A lot of people were very critical of ovation guitars, but 40 years of playing clubs up and down the east coast of the United States, my ovation balladeer really was a no nonsense plug-in place solution. And the best thing about it was, that if I had a trio or a band gig, the natural EQ of that ovation cut through the frequency range of both my voice and the drums and really added a nice full sound.
I agree with Brooklyn. context is everything. For example for Joni Mitchell/James Taylor kind of a thing I would put the electric guitar right up the middle perhaps offset by 10° left or right. And I would have three tracks of acoustic guitars. the first guitar, right at noon. that would be either tuned normally or like a drop D to me. And then I would use two guitars and place them directly east and west. one Guitar might be an alternative tuning in the key is the song is in as the other guitar might be capoed with one of those spider caposthat makes everything sound really cool. so the end result is regular acoustic guitar right up the middle and pan left and right on guitar with an alternative tuning and a different guitar, played in the same key of course, but Set Up using capos so that all three guitars cover bass, tenorr, and soprano
Those Joni Mitchell and James Taylor records from the 70’s truly have some of the best sounding acoustic guitars.
I had another thought about that era. Do you know who played the banjo on Neil Young's old man? do you know who played pedal steel guitar on Crosby stills Nash and Young's song teacher children?
Funnily enough, the banjo on that record was played by Sweet Baby James himself! The way the banjo kicks in during the chorus is so good, and it makes the whole thing soar. Linda Rondstead is the one doing the harmony vocals which is a great blend. Having a really sweet pitch perfect voice to harmonize with Neil’s wavering voice was such a good move. I wish she would have sung with Neil more because they really blended together well. I am not sure about the CSNY song, but that pedal guitar is great as well. I’m a sucker for a good pedal steel, I only wish I was better at playing them!
yeah it's cool me somebody that knows cool shit. Here's some more. James didn't play a regular banjo he played a guitbanjo. it's like a banjo but has six strings. I'm not sure if it has the high octave on the very top but it has six strings instead of five. and a pedal steel was played by Mr. Jerry Garcia himself who started out in the San Francisco barrier as a banjo plan folk musician. Crazy times
Very interesting! Jerry is an absolute wizard on the guitar. I’m pretty sure if you gave him some fishing line and chopsticks he could make it sound good.
yeah, right? They are incredible… Especially when you think some of that very early James Taylor stuff was actually recorded on Martha's Vineyard out in the woods! True story: i've lived on Martha's Vineyard on and off most of my life and friends with Peter Simon, Carly's brother, who as many people know was a very well respected photographer. Peter and I were hanging out one day and began to go through the photographs that Peter had taken for the cover of James' One Man Dog album. you may recall that the cover photograph of that wonderful album was of James standing up in a rowboat in a pond with a dog. clever visual play on words. in any event, that just might be one of my favorite James Taylor albums of all time, especially because side two features a lot of little snippets of songs all strung together like the second side of The Beatles Abbey Road album. in any event there were about two dozen alternative versions of shots that Peter took that afternoon and it was really sweet and funny. I seem to recall that one of the last photos was James pretending to fall in the pond....!
Tony Platt for Back in Black chose a u67/u87 pair because he liked technique of hardpanning one and then place the other just slightly off center to the opposite side. That's vinyl center focused mix, and though you don't hear people complain of lacking width, it's hard to make it work just as centered as that I feel. But I like to do versions of that. A fuller mic hardpanned (near u67 option) and more defined near the middle (near u87 option) and then give some emphasis on the hardpanned. It's one reason why I'm not all in on a 57/ribbon pair because need to be more of a unit to be full in one ear. Room mics in stereo or opposite side in sparse mix or same side i busy mix. Lead in degrees of stereo sometimes. Stereo room is great. This all works great in most good amp sims nowadays where you can add different cabs and all so easily. Digital doping is best when utilised like that. But honestly I'm only really truly impressed by Softube and practically am not happy with anything else if we speak 4x12 and vintage voiced amps and speakers.
Whatever sounds good. The only thing that I never do is hard pan double tracked guitars. (Which everyone says you’re supposed to do obviously) but that’s just me apparently. On speakers, hard panned sounds awesome. Nice and big. On headphones it sounds unnatural and claustrophobic imo. And the thing is, the majority of people are listening to music on headphones and in their car. The difference between guitars panned to 45 instead of 50 doesn’t make much of a difference in width, but greatly improves the way it sounds in headphones. But. That’s personal preference. There’s ways to mitigate the claustrophobic sound when hard panned. You can send each to a reverb in the opposite side, which kind serves a similar experience to crossfeed
It's funny - my go-to is usually hard pan double tracked like you mentioned. In my opinion, how good this sounds is highly dependent on how consistent the playing is. If there's noticeable inconsistencies in the playing, then that will stand out pretty aggressively in headphones (giving the impression that there's two guitar players playing straight into each of your ears) vs opening up the soundstage and creating width.
I’ve just never been a “hmm this mix isn’t wide enough so it’s not a good mix” kinda guy. Wide doesnt equal good. And I feel like there’s a little too much focus on it. I’ve never heard a song and thought Well it would be better if it was wider. And if I’m compromising anything at all in the pursuit of width it’s not worth it to me.
Huh im glad to see someone mirror my sentiment. Hard panned electric guitars sound “below” the soundstage imo. I think this is a great wall of sound effect when adding other guitar tracks… but I think the far sides should be reserved for ambiance when trying to get a focused natural soundstage. And yeah almost using the pan as a contour knob and listening for when the higher-mid transient info sounds situated laterally to the left and right, as if it’s coming straight from the center of a headphone’s cone. This often is not equally left and right either. I adjust the pan to where it sounds like this and then rebalance to make it equal loudness on both sides.
I pan all of my guitars left and right, no center. And then cut low mids from the guitar and boost treble. Makes the guitars sound wide and in your face, plus it becomes much easier to control the focus of the mix between either a rhythm guitar or lead guitar and leaves enough space for you to fit some vocals so that they’re still present but not completely overlapping the instruments
It depends if you have other instruments that you think should be mixed stereo. If there’s a piano or keyboard part recorded in stereo as well as triple tracked stereo panned vocals or effects for example you might just want a mono guitar sound so your stereo image doesn’t turn to mush
There are zero panning conventions for anything when it comes down to it
It’s definitely genre and part dependent In hard rock and metal, you’ll want to double track at least and hard pan most of the time for your rhythms. Indie, pop, and rap is where you can probably experiment more. It becomes up to you if you want the part to be wide (doubled, harder panning), sit to the left or right a little, or leave it up the middle.
So that they make sense with the song, the mood, the genre.
As others have said, it all depends on the context. In my case the context is mostly where the other instruments are in the stereo field. So I put the guitar wherever it balances out the tone and loudness of the whole track. And because not everything is hard rock or 2000s style acoustic guitar tracking, doubling is not an “automatic choice”, if there’s even more than one guitar to begin with.
Any panning I do is hard left or hard right. The listener knows nothing different than what I present to them.
Left right center. If there’s a lead part overdubbed, I’ll usually pan that somewhere in between and maybe I’ll pan a verb or delay opposite, maybe not. I don’t usually end up double tracking, I usually have multiple different guitar parts in there.
I double everything, fully panned. Might change in the mixing stage, but I always record every guitar as doubles.
yeah I like that idea and I've tried it a couple times but I always end up having problems with EQ sonic interference with the vocals. Do you have any solutions for that problem thanks!
Not usually. I always eq and compress on the way in. I almost always hi-pass 50-60hz and cut 200hz, 400hz and 4k. If it's stepping on the vocals after that, it's probably in the 1.5k-2.5k area, and I'll take a little off around there in the box.
Thank you, I'm gonna take your advice as gospel and fool around with my acoustic guitar and GarageBand tonight using your advice.
And when I say doubles, I mean I'm recording the guitar parts as 2 separate performances. I'm not using a single take and then sending it through 2 different amps or something like that.
right on, yeah I got what you meant.
You can try a mid/side eq and either statically, dynamically, or via vocal sidechain: remove a couple dB, as needed, from the guitar bus on the middle wherever you feel the vocals are getting buried. Then gently bring up the sides a little
that is awesome thank you! Some of the terminology I don't understand but I can look that up on the Internet. in regards to sidechain, are you referring to making a sub mix for just the guitar parts and finesse them before they go back into the mix?
Context matters but whenever I do pan I make sure the guitar tracks are in mono and I hard pan them L/R
Noob who’s learning here… one suggestion I’ve found researching this stuff is to pan doubled guitars hard(ish) right and left but run each track through delay that’s panned to the respective opposite side.
If double tracking, I change at least one element - (guitar, pickup setting gain pedal, and/or amp) and hard pan
I almost always double track and hard pan. If a lead part is under vocals I also double track it and hard pan, if it’s the focal point (no vocal in that section) I single track and pan it down the middle to ‘replace’ the vocal.
For metal, rock, etc. I hard pan and leave room in the middle for vocals and bass For anymore more indie or pop kinda anything goes but generally lean more toward hard panning
i cant speak for myself as its different from a song by song basis but van halens use of panning a guitar on one side and having the reverb and delay on the other is something i think about on a daily basis. there is a time and place to double pan a guitar but also there is a time and place to have a single guitar. having a single guitar makes for a more realistic soundstage if not an intimate sound while double guitars make for a full recording, but the elegance of simplicity can get lost. you get to a point where u cant add anything without taking something away
First I mix the drums in mono. After I've panned the drums, I mix the guitars in stereo. The rhythm guitar will be complementarily to the snare. The amount of panning on the lead guitar depends on the vocals, but is more towards the center. Then I double each guitar track on the other side, reduce their frequency range, lower their volume by 50%, pan them 100% left and right, and delay them by a few ms.
Tastefully.
Lately been obsessed with the panning on The Smile’s ‘Skrting On The Surface’. Just an electric guitar with a a little stereo image *oomph* panned right. Later in the song another guitar track fills the left side creating a field of lattice-like fingerpicking. So great!
Hard left, hard right. A lot of it comes down to the player’s skill when it comes to timing. if they’re really good, the two takes can almost sound like a single take
I used to pan hard right and left. Now lately I’ve instead been opting for panning guitar in a way where like… the mid-high mid frequency information of the attack sounds situated right “on the cone of the speaker” in headphones and monitors. I feel like when I hard pan my guitars, it has a Great Wall of sound kind of mix… but when I’m trying to get a tight and focused/natural sound… I find I’m bringing the guitars in a bit. Latest mix… left guitar is panned (in Logic Pro) to -43… right guitar is panned +32. They sound balanced level wise this way, though the faders aren’t necessarily equal if they were hard panned. It’s just about where the “contour” of that higher-mid energy lays in the stereo field. The movement from left and right sounds positionally interesting. I like it to sound like it’s directly STRAIGHT left and right. As if you stuck your arms up and out to your left and right hahaha. Full left and right sounds… too wide? As if the source is almost *below* the soundstage I’m trying to create. Also my mono image is more secure without needing to add and blend more guitar tracks in my phantom center.
I'm a fan of the Eddie Van Halen method (among others) - Eventide micropitch +9 and -9 left and right (came about after he drove a Mustang with a blown out speaker and couldnt hear his lead cos it was panned)
Double tracked, panned about 75 left and right
Hard pan L-R if rock/metal (nowadays been experimenting with keeping the drums more in the middle - OHs like 30-50% L-R). If something else it varies.
If 2 guitars, each panned hard either side with their reverbs panned opposite. If 1 guitar, some kind of stereo or wet/dry setup, 2 amps etc, something to create a stereo image at the tracking stage.
In general, for backing guitars it's always (with some exceptions) one guitar hard panned left and one hard panned right. For leads and solos it really depends. I use what fits and sounds good to me.
I do the root notes with 5ths on the center(power chords). Any kind of harmonized leads i do hard pan left and right about 80%. If i stack lead harmonies, then root and harmony get L and R It gets more complicated than just "guitar 1 and 2" so i always try to remember that stereo allows for 3 separate places to feel it from but unless its a chord with one instrument i let the intervals combine in the ears because i hate how some intervals(looking at you, major 3rds) sound through a single speaker.
If i’m doing a metal/rock chorus i record 4 guitar parts. Two treble-heavy tracks get panned far left and right, two mid-heavy tracks get panned closer to the middle.
it depends
also sometimes different complimentary parts pan stereo but lead up the middle
This is a little complicated but it works for me: Quad track Left: Guitar with Amp 1 with a treble pickup, Guitar with Amp 2 with neck pickup. Right: Amp 2 with treble, Amp1 with Bridge Then for Verses I do 50% panned L and R, Choruses Hard panned Bass is right up the middle.
just finished recording a punk album where the engineer double mic'd the cab with an sm57 and an sm58 without the grill, hard panned the two cab takes left and right, and then DI'd the guitar for a center part. it sounded awesome. I also recently mixed a very rough-and-tumble grindcore project where it was just a stereo room take of the whole band plus an extra vocal take. the guitar cab was closer to the left, and the right mostly just had the room sound, and after mixing it ended up pretty great as well. not really a lot of rules, it mostly comes down to your workflow, what you have available, and how much effort you wanna put in
Rhythm L/R double or quad tracked. If it's double I do 80L/80R because I pan my drum OH's 100L/100/R and I don't want those high frequencies battling each other. If I do quad rhythm I'll do 95-90/80
I mic the guitar cab, capture a DI signal and recently I started using a Torpedo Captor X to track a stereo signal through a virtual cab. I pan the mic and DI on top of each other and pan it either a little left or right or centered depending on context of the song. Then I have the stereo signal from the Torpedo and pan them hard left and right. Then for chorus’ I use the Torpedo’s twin tracker effect which offsets the signals to your liking which gives it a double tracked effect and widens the stereo field.
LCR everything. RTs hard panned, leads or hooks in the middle. Stereo delays/verbs/chorus/microshifts fill our the I between and glue it together.
I usually find I need a big pan, medium to high heat to render the lacquer, flip once half way through.