Violating the "Bass in Center of Mix" rule

[kuene]

I've mixed a few songs where the kick and bass are hard panned together, and the snare and overhead are hard-panned the other way. this actually works pretty well.e

[losthighway]

That new Black Keys has the bass panned a lot. That album does the minimalism thing really well. Nice round, dirty sounds and a lot of space.

[the finger genius]

Sorry, double post.

[the finger genius]

I know this should go in "Listen to my stuff", but I'm working my band's new record and we're planning on panning the bass and guitar left and right.

http://landspeedrecording.com/2010/5.26/areyouagod.wav

It's kind of the only thing to do with just guitar-bass-drums (all played live, no extra parts, overdubs, or vocals.) Ot at least it's the only thing I want to do.

[inasilentway]

Vinyl aside, the reason for bass to be in the center is the same reason that an SVT is 300 watts: those low frequencies require more power. So the thinking goes that rather than have the left speaker working twice as hard as the right, put it down the center and have both speakers working together to get the same amount of fullness with more headroom. (as was mentioned earlier, bass frequencies tend towards the omnidirectional anyway, hence the headroom taking priority over stereo positioning) It's not a hard and fast rule, rather a fact that is sometimes useful and sometimes not.

Those Sharon Jones records have panned bass, and Gabriel Roth is very fond of the technique. But there's a thread on Gearslutz where the guy who mastered those records mentions that he had to mono the bass frequencies to physically be able to cut the vinyl and ended up with some phase cancellation in the end. So, like everything involving extreme panning, check the mono!

[kevin206]

Van Halen II. Only reason I know this is because the 8-track(cartridge) player in my dad's garage only works on one channel. It's cool, yet frustrating, to hear Van Halen without any guitar.

[Vogon]

BTW when the bass gets reproduced into the room you play the music into, it most always becomes omnidirectional.

True, but it's the harmonics above the fundamental that localize the sound. If it's burried, not a such a big deal.
Headphones - then panned bass & drums do drive me a bit mad.

[christiannokes]

If you wanted you could copy and split the original bass signal into different bass eq areas and pan those so you have different parts of the signals eq spectrum spread out.

You could split some more and take the higher frequencies of those and pan them too, like plucking/slapping sound, or just higher mids or whatever.

Then you could compress/delay one or some of those splits to further widen the stereo image of the instrument- if that's something you wanted to do.

Thinking out loud here.

[vvv]

Jeff Beck Group, with Rod, and immediately after, has a lotta bass-panned tracks.

[currentspulledmeunder]

The Cows album 'Whorn' has the bass and guitar panned left/right respectively. I think it sounds fantastic, but it was recorded live in the studio and there is a lot of bleed from the other instruments.

[slowcentury]

Eric's Trip used to do lots of bass panning. One song on the "Gordon Street Haunting" EP had this really cool passage where they panned the bass to give it almost a Tremolo effect.

[Brett Siler]

On Stationary Odyssey's Son's Of Boy and Head! Foot! and the Pink Axe! I hard panned bass sometimes. Head Foot was the first album for me to do that, and it opened my eyes (or ears I should say) to it being able to really clear up a mix sometimes. Meticulous panning can really clear things up, it's pretty amazing. On Sons Of Boy I ended up putting instuments in places I didn't expect them to fit before. Letting go of preconceptions that people have about the way things should sound will make you recordings sound better.

[trodden]

yeah dude, do what you want. Bass hard panned. Drums hard panned. I pretty much just love hard panning.

As stated above the main issue was when cutting to vinyl. If the bass pulls too much to either side the needle will jump. If you're not making vinyl don't worry about it. And even if you are the bass doesn't have to have a ton of lowend in it! Hence all the classic examples.

yep. and if you let the mastering engineer know they are mastering/;premastering for vinyl.. they'll take care of it.

I played in a band with two bass players for many years. I recorded many of our 7" releases and we put them out ourselves... I didn't know anything at the time, nothing actually, but everything worked out fine. both bass guitars far/wide panned.

[standup]

Funny, I always run it up the middle. Vaguely I have the idea that we need to let the two speakers share the work. But really, vinyl is pretty much gone and I should probably rethink/get over it.... Interesting thought.

[standup]

Funny, I always run it up the middle. Vaguely I have the idea that we need to let the two speakers share the work. But really, vinyl is pretty much gone and I should probably rethink/get over it.... Interesting thought.