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one might want to imitate the old vintage-sounding drums-on-the-left vocals-on-the-right fake “stereo” of some early transitional ’60s records, or suggest actual on-stage placement, like drums right, piano left, bass center, typical of many acoustic jazz trio recordings. Another panning consideration is the idea of symmetry in the mix—making sure the mix is balanced so there’s consistent energy left/center/right, and too many elements don’t get bunched up on one side for any significant period during the song. Again, this is not a hard and fast rule—many mixes deliberately use imbalanced side positionings to good ends, especially on older recordings, but for pop mixes nowadays some degree of symmetry is more standard. For example, a typical rock mix might position the lead elements at center, as mentioned above (vocal, kick, snare, bass), with the rest of the drumkit in stereo extending perhaps halfway (50%) left and right, with dual electric guitars further (maybe 75%) left and right, and dual strumming acoustic guitars hard left and right. Background vocals may also be panned symmetrically. Other instruments might be balanced off against each other, keeping tonality in mind as well—a single bright acoustic guitar playing a choppy rhythmic figure might be panned partly-left to complement bright hi-hats on the right side of the drumkit. If you’re looking for some symmetry in your mix between certain instruments, make sure to pay attention to when the various parts play. A guitar on the left that only comes in during choruses will not maintain a good left-right balance for the mix against a Rhodes that plays throughout on the right—the mix may sound overly rightheavy when the guitar drops out in the verses. But these are all just suggestions, and again, to reiterate, the use of symmetry is always optional—just one more tool in the mixers’ arsenal. Building blocks Right up there with “Should I solo tracks or mix in context?” is “Which instrument should I focus on first?” For pop/rock/r&b mixes, conventional wisdom often suggests starting with the rhythm section, primarily the drums, followed typically by the bass. As always, this is not the only valid approach, but, as described above, it does provide a good anchor, not only for the musical elements and the sound/style of the mix, but for overall mix levels as well—the drums will usually include some of the loudest tracks with the strongest peaks, and settling on a good level on these tracks (with at least 6–12 dB of headroom) may help to avoid “level creep”, where the overall level of the mix creeps up as more and more tracks are added until the master fader is overloading. The drums also usually play throughout (most of) the song, and will interact with all the other instruments in the mix. Of course, not all songs have a drum part. If not, a good alternative might be whatever instrument provides the main rhythm—for example, an acoustic guitar that strums or plays a rhythmic figure throughout (most of) the song. Even if the song has a full drum & bass rhythm section, pulling up a rhythm guitar or other part to work on first might be another way to go. The idea is to start with something that functions as a musical anchor throughout the tune, and will be a useful reference as other elements are tweaked and blended into the mix. But for now, let’s assume we adopted the conventional wisdom and started the mix by addressing the drums first. In a modern mix, at least a modern pop/rock mix, the drums are one of the instruments that, due to close-miking and processing, typically sounds the least like it would in real life. We’re used to this hyped-up sound—drums in a modern recording sound bigger than life, and this offers the mixer the opportunity to really leave his/her mark on one of the most prominent elements of any mix. And what specific processors will we turn to first as we get the ball rolling?
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RECORDING October 2012

Figure 3. Top: An EQ following a Compressor—the most traditional ordering of those processors. Bottom: A second Compressor following an EQ, to tame any notes that might ring out too much from the strong resonant peaks in the preceding EQ.

Recording - October 2012

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