Recording - September 2016 - 33

When coming up with a panning scheme, low frequency
sounds deserve two special considerations. First, it's commonly
accepted that frequencies below 80 Hz are perceived as more
omnidirectional than frequencies above 80 Hz. Second, the
laws of physics dictate that for equal loudness, more power is
required to reproduce lower frequencies than higher frequencies. Taking both of these concepts into consideration suggests-and the vast majority of albums produced throughout
the history of stereo recording confirms-that it makes good
sense to pan low frequencies at or near center. These two phenomena are worthy of further exploration, but are out of the
scope of this article. Suffice it to say that generally speaking,
when I mix, the kick drum and bass, or whatever low frequency elements there are, are usually panned center.
If a vocal arrangement includes just one lead vocal, then
panning that vocal center is kind of a no-brainer. Of course
there's no law that says you can't pan a solo vocal hard left or
right or somewhere between... When more vocals are added
to an arrangement, panning bears further consideration.
Drum kit panning can be approached in so many different
ways. Are you presenting the pan from the drummer's perspective
or from the audience's perspective? How wide should the drums
be panned? Do you want the high tom coming out one speaker
and the low tom coming out the opposite? Should the right crash
come out of only the right speaker, the left crash only out of the left
speaker? There's no one right answer to any of these questions.
I do have a personal preference on drums: audience perspective (for a close-miked right-handed drummer),with kick
and snare center, hat approximately 30-40% right, floor tom

approximately 30-40% left, single rack tom approximately
7-15% right, stereo cymbals approximately 50% left/right. For
more distant miking, depending on the number of mics and
their positions, it's not at all unusual to pan these either hard
left, hard right or center.
As a general rule, I like to use "opposition", balancing
sounds of similar nature or function, when placing sounds in
the stereo field. If I'm mixing a band with two of any instrument (e.g. two guitars), I'll try to put one leftish and the other
rightish. If I only have one example of a particular instrument
or function in the mix, I'll often pan it either leftish or rightish
(hard left and/or hard right included), then send this track to a
mono delay return that's panned opposite of the source, with a
delay time of approximately 23 milliseconds, to the effect that
the return is a "bounce" off the opposite wall. This technique
allows the dry track to maintain its pan identity but also gives
the sense of a "space" in which the track was performed.
Ultimately, panning is one of those attributes of a mix that
helps define how infinite the process can be. As I wrote earlier, even when a panning scheme seems kind of obvious to me
from the outset, I like to continue to explore alternative panning schemes until one kind of "snaps" into place. I always
know it when I find that magic final pan, and I don't stop
searching for it until I've found it.
3. Cleaning clips: mutes, fades, and crossfades
Once the workspace includes only the tracks I'm pretty sure
will be final and I've at least initially placed them on the soundstage, I start to focus on "cleaning" the clips. The definition of

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - September 2016