non-DAW panning questions

[m-m-m]

I'm workin' on a song, and I've got everything panned where I want it when everything is goin' about 3 minutes into the song. The only problem is at the beginning of the song, of the 3 instruments that are running, 2 of them (an organ/pad and some very sparse guitar) are pretty hard left. The other track plays a simple 2-beat long groove and is then silent for 6 beats before restarting the same pattern. I may add some bass (synth, software or otherwise), but that will most likely be panned center and my mix will still seem 'left heavy' for the first big chunk of the song. There is also a stereo drum track goin' (panned how one would expect). I'm not not opposed to writing in some pan automation on the tracks, but I wanted to know what everyone thought about this.

 

IOW, from a mix philosophy perspective, is having a left heavy mix for the first 30s of 4.5 minute song something that I should worry about?? Will it sound weird in the real world or will most people not even consciously notice.

 

Just in case your wonderin', it kind of starts out trance and then ends up a bit more trip-hop (I guess, I always struggle with genres).

[marcel72]

Off the top of my head, I can think of lots of examples of songs that start on one side (from Motown to the Who to Spoon to the Flaming Lips), but I'm not familiar enough with dance genres to know if this is cool.

 

What would be the effect thru a club or festival PA? That's what you're mixing for, right?

 

You can also copy the parts onto new tracks, pan these where you want for the intro, and then just edit the audio on the two tracks to make your pans. I like that better than automation unless something is intended to 'move' across the spectrum (like ping pong delays or something).

 

Maybe mono your intro, and then spread it out on the downbeat when it kicks hard. That could have a nice effect.

 

Hope that helps.

[m-m-m]

Off the top of my head, I can think of lots of examples of songs that start on one side (from Motown to the Who to Spoon to the Flaming Lips), but I'm not familiar enough with dance genres to know if this is cool.

I know that there's older stuff out there (beatles and ramones for example) where the panning is a bit funky. It's cool to see you mention spoon and the flaming lips though.

What would be the effect thru a club or festival PA? That's what you're mixing for, right?

I don't think that it's really realistic to say that my modest home creations will get played at clubs or festivals. I'm making music for music's sake primairly. I realize that with this kind of 'expeimental' music creation there really are no rules. But at the same time I don't want listeners to become distracted. I quess that realistically most of the people that would listen to my music would listen on computer monitors (shouldn't matter), ipods (I'll have to listen to it through my ipod and check), and in the car (sounded fine in my car).

You can also copy the parts onto new tracks, pan these where you want for the intro, and then just edit the audio on the two tracks to make your pans. I like that better than automation unless something is intended to 'move' across the spectrum (like ping pong delays or something).

I hadn't really thought of that approach, but I do this kind of thing all the time on hardware DAWs. It occured to me, after making y initial post, that the guitar takes a break at the end of this 'left heavy' part. So using this method it should be really easy to mix it more or less center, and then put it back on the left for the rest of the song.

Hope that helps.

more than you know. Thanx a lot!