So here is a question. I have: One rhythm Guitar, one Lead guitar that only plays solo like fragments here and there, one Rhodes and one Wurlitzer they never play at the same time, one lead vocal and to backgrounds that always sing short fragments just supporting the main vocal line with harmony. How would you go about the panning? I am afraid to pan the rhythm guitar that plays chords during the whole song to either side cause it could cause the mix to be slanted to one side since its the only other element really carrying the rhythm besides the drums. How would you approach the panning on this situation?

Thanks for the advice!

 

You might consider whether the guitar track is the main driving component of the track. If it is, having it off to one side could upset your balance without a counterweight. With a single main rhythm guitar track that doesn't have a counter weight, you can try panning it off center (say 3 o'clock), bussing or sending it to a stereo group, and applying group processing to that. Try putting a small room reverb, a delay or micropitch - any of these options will give you a stereo FX track that can be used to offset the weight of the guitar on the other side.

 

I'd pan the rhythm guitar hard left then send it to a bus with a 50 millisecond delay panned hard right. The Wurli and Rhodes hard left and right and lead guitar centre with a wide stereo reverb.

 

In a situation like this I would probably use a reference track and just study certain genres and how they go about panning in certain situations. Other than that, just make your own creative decisions. Remember that it's your own canvas

 

You pretty much described any Van Halen song up to the album "5150". The song "Jump" would be a great track to go by: Eddie Van Halen's rhythm guitar is panned left about halfway, solos are panned right a bit from center, backing vocals are panned right, main keyboards panned left halfway, high strings panned right halfway. Since Eddie played both guitars and keyboards alone, they always tried to place the instruments in a "true" band perspective without cheating and doubling guitars or recording keyboards direct from the instrument (on the album "1984", they were all recorded through a clean Marshall stack with one mic, like a guitar). If you're not willing to double guitars, try not panning any instrument more than halfway in either direction (except stereo drum overheads and room mics, which you can hard-pan, and toms, which you can pan as you normally would) and panning your delays and reverbs on those instruments in the opposite direction to minimize balance issues and keep your ears from dragging to one side or the other too much. Listen:

 

Last edited: Dec 4, 2018