hi guys ive been a year making tech house music with ableton and i know some people who pan to kicks left and right.
is that the right way or not?

im rading a good book some of u might be intrestead in its called THE DANCE MUSIC MANUAL and here i think its stay in dead center. so im a bit confuised

 

mono that kick bro ... i make dnb and i have everything from 250 down mono

 

yes i forgot they mono them and then pan, wht do you meen by 250 and do you pan the or not? lol

 

Centered. Doesn't have to be mono though. A tad of reverb can make things a bit more spatial and interesting. Low end should be mono and top end can be stereo. Reverbs are usually highpassed in good mixes anyway.

 

he means everything below 250Hz is mono. how do you mono everything under a set Hz? I just mono my kick, snare and some others...

btw, i don't think it's a good idea to pan your kicks, what i learned is the same what you read in that book.

 

If you use a stereo box with a mixer with mono channels, you should hard pan the 2 input to full L and R. If you're doing it in the box, I don't see point.
Kick should be at the center, no need to pan, and if they're mono, that's cool as well.
Read about phasing. It really hurt on bassy drum.

 

use one mono kik that has all the bass and the important stuff in it in mono and flavour other attack noises to taste left and/or right (but suttle)

 

We mono everything under 250 hz to be safe the clubs can handle the tracks otherwise the kick is swimming all over the place in the clubs. it's also not a smart thing to put a delay or reverb on low end material you could spread the high frequencies but it's better to layer and put those effects on the hi bass or in parallel mode high passed on another channel.

 

there are No rules if you are trying to be creative be creative like in Hip hop sometimes i will automate a Tom to Pan to the left or right to give the song some detention so it is not so stale and one demential do what sounds good/cool just as long as it is Not to much out of phase keep checking your phase correlation meter

 

there certainly are no rules lyric8 but in this case he specifically mentioned it's tech house that he is making. so assuming he wants his tunes played in a club which mostly have mono systems as Dynamic Force pointed out. reverb on the kick is a common techno technique although it is usually sidechained ie the reverb ducks when the kick hits. a lot of dub techno uses this also.
as someone pointed out , you should be careful about phase issues.

my advice

• choose samples wisely (you cant polisha turd) .

• choose a kick with all the characteristics u are looking for.

• avoid layering if you are not sure how to do it properly.

• rip a kick from one of the songs that you like.

• especially with techno - tune your kick to your bass or song key.

• you can use a tuner to determine the key of your kick or use abletons spectrum analyzer.

another tip is to drop smexoscope on the end of your fx chain. it will give/show your kick in real time. also when compressing you get a good visual of what u are doing to the kick.


Also - Check out this site REMIX COMPS. There could be some of your fav producers doing remix comps. download the stems and reverse engineer the tracks. i.e analyze the kick shape, peak/dbfs , track structure etc ... you can learn a lot.

 

All of my drum sounds are always mono. Just like they are when I record them with the mics. Nobody sane records drums with stereo mics! Except the whole kit - overhead mics, to record some natural ambience, too, if you have a good sounding room. Kick is always in the centre, and others can be panned around the stereo field. That's the "oldschool" way, and the right way of mixing - to create your own stereo field with a reverb for all, mostly mono sounds. So, mono drums + some reverb become stereo drums on you master buss, and you hear them in stereo then. Usually, I also set up a separate aux buss for drums, and other stuff for that matter, that I compress slightly for better balance, and easier mixing. I usually set up about 8 aux busses that become "stems" that I render to WAVs at the end of the mix, so I can easily master them later in a separate mix, and even create separate mixes easier for different purposes.

The problem for most of the in-the-box people is lack of mixing knowledge, and that they've never worked with a real console. There are no stereo channels on a real console, only if you create them yourself by combining two of them into a stereo track, and panning one hard left, and the other hard right. That's usually only done with hihats, drum overheads, back vocals, strings and pads. Such mix gives you always a 100% nicely mono-compatible mix, and you don't have to worry about how it will translate in mono.

That's why I always cringe when I get a sample library full of stereo drum samples. It's just pointless and a waste of CPU processing. However, the conversion to mono doesn't take much time with a batch processor. ;)

Cheers!

p.s. The individual outputs on all drum machines, samplers, and synths I know, and I know A LOT, are mono, too. Why they [sample makers] make them stereo, or in most cases just double-mono, is beyond me. Probably to waste some space, so the library would appear bigger. Rolly 909, 808, 707, R8, any Akai MPC, E-MU Emulator I/II/III, E-Max, Yum-aha A3000/4000/5000, Akai Z5000, Ensoniq ASR10, Akai S1000... to mention just a few, the list is absolutely huge, they all have separate mono outputs, because that's considered the "pro" norm! In some cases, you have to buy an upgrade to get these. Stereo outputs were made only for stage and occasions when you don't need to process the sounds separately. So when the sample makers claim the samples are 100% authentic, you should check if they're mono. ;) But usually the're just double-mono sou you can safely get rid of the one channel, and save on some HD space and CPU processing.

 

run the kicks mono for l and r

use mixed in key to match the pitch

i do it all the time with rave + hard trance stuff
one side analog kick and the other digital pad
layer 2 kicks for each side

 

The Haas effect saved the music mixing world. Haterz gonna hate!!!

Oh yeah........keep the kick in the middle!!!!

 

WFT are you talking about man

 

He's right from a certain point of view.
I also use that technique for some leads and chords.
But, you can also create a good effect panning two bassdrums (one left, one right) adding reverb in one and a small delay in the other.

just a tip.... ;)

 

It is good habit to keep everything below 100 Hz in mono, spread evenly between left and right. This is because when pressing to vinyl, having a large bit of panned low frequency can throw the needle off in that direction, screwing up playback. As kicks, even with subbass layered underneath, will often have some content below 100Hz, keep them central!
It's also important in clubs, as most listeners won't be dead centre, and so the kick will sound really quite low in the mix for some people, whereas others will hear it too much.

Hope this is helpful!

 

Ez, defo want to keep the kick mono, if the kick has nice stereo high that you like double the track up or send to an aux and cut the lows to keep the top punch / air or use bx control or alike to mono it below the low end content, the point is that you want to keep the low thud for it to cut through on the mix and the best way to do that is to have it mono for sure. if you feel its still not cutting through then layering is the way forward.

All the best.

 

oww shit didnt know i would get theese many replys so thanx to all of you! so how on earth do i i mono them from 25o down?
i think im just gona stick with what ive been told it doesnt contadict the book as i thought. by monoing them and paning them makes perfect sense.
ill just mono them by using itility and thats it??

thanx!!!