Panning Music: How to Pan Tracks for a Wider Mix | LANDR Mix Tips #3

Опубликовано: 13 Октябрь 2024
на канале: LANDR

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What is panning in music? Find out how to pan in your music production for a wider mix.

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Panning is one of the essential features of your DAW’s mixer.

Along with fader level, panning is one of the most important processes you’ll apply in your mix outside of plugin effects like EQ, compression and reverb.

In this video I’ll go through everything you need to know to use panning effectively in your mix.

Panning is the process that positions an audio signal spatially in the stereo field created by two speakers.

By varying the intensity of a signal in each speaker, we can trick our brains into localizing a sound source on an imaginary plane relative to our listening position.

How does panning work?
Panning works by changing the ratio of a signal in one speaker relative to the other.

Both speakers playing a signal at the same level is equivalent to a mono recording—we perceive it as dead center in the stereo field.

When fully centered, the identical signals will stack together and seem louder.

To compensate, the signal is slightly attenuated relative to center position to create a smooth semi-circular stereo image around the listener.

Choosing the stereo position of your tracks is just as important as setting their level or sculpting their frequency balance with EQ.

There’s as many approaches to panning as there are mix engineers. But there are some common threads that can steer you toward an approach that works for your own mixing process.

If you’re just getting started with identifying frequency ranges and finding out which sounds are masking which, mixing in mono can be a helpful exercise.

Taking panning out of the equation forces you to focus on your mix’s frequency balance only.

This can help you pick out the main sources of confusion in your mix. Once you’ve dealt with the clutter in mono, you can pan things back out again with increased clarity.

On the other hand, even experienced engineers forget how powerful the simplest functions of the mixer can be.

A huge amount of mixing work can be accomplished just by setting the pan position and fader levels.

If you take the time to level and pan your mix intelligently, you may find you don’t need to do as much processing to accomplish your goal.

If you’re unsure where to even start, you might consider the LCR technique.

With LCR, your choice of where to position a track is limited to three options—hard left, dead centrer or hard right.

It may sound extreme, but LCR panning can help you combat narrow stereo spread—one of the most glaring signs a track has been mixed by an inexperienced engineer:

Even if you decide not to go for a strict LCR approach, don’t be afraid to pan some of the elements in your mix out the edges of the stereo field.

A wide sounding mix is always made up of sources panned in a variety of positions, including the extremes.

Example
In this example, I have an early mix of a track that’s sounding a little too narrow.

Since I’m only working with a few sources, my options are a bit limited and I opted to keep things close to the centrer. I’ll see if I can get a wider soundstage by being more aggressive with my panning.

I’ll start by using the LCR technique to get my sources out to the edges of the stereo field.

My stereo synth pad, double-tracked guitar lines and background vocals can all get hard panned.

Listening in the mix, this already gives the track a lot more dimension.

I’ll pull slightly back on the guitars to create a bit of variation but overall this LCR-style approach sounds broader and gives the impression of wider soundstage.

Panning is a key function of your DAW.

Now that you have some ideas about how to get started with panning, get back to your DAW and move some sounds around the stereo field.

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Read more about the basics of panning: https://blog.landr.com/use-panning-ge...

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