From the course: Audio Mixing Master Class
Micropan for greater track separation - Pro Tools Tutorial
From the course: Audio Mixing Master Class
Micropan for greater track separation
- [Instructor] Some of the best mixers in the world spend hours on their panning, just moving things left and right a little at a time, until things jump out of the mix. By looking at your panning a lot harder, you'll find yourself getting the same effect without having to EQ as much. So first of all, let's listen to this track, and everything is either in mono, or, if it's a stereo track, it's spread out in stereo. Now, look especially here, we have the snare in stereo, we have a hi-hat in stereo, shaker in stereo, snaps in stereo. ("Happy Birthday" by Patricia Bahia) Now, it sounds pretty good. The only thing is it's sort of boring, because everything is up the middle, or it seems like it's up the middle. Everything that's in stereo, panned in stereo, is far left and right, so it really makes for a boring mix. And not only that, there are some instruments that are covered up by other instruments. They sound okay when they play alone, but as soon as another instrument comes in, it covers it up. So we can solve all that with panning, and here's what we're going to do first. We're just going to listen to the percussion here, so we'll listen to the snares first. Hi-hat, shaker, snaps. (rhythmic drumming) We may very well want the snare to be in stereo. There's one track right here. This is in stereo, and in fact, this sounds pretty good and it's pretty wide. And since we kind of want it in the mix and there's not a lot holding the mix down, we may want to keep this in wide stereo. Let's just listen to it by itself. (rhythmic drumming) That's a pretty good combination, but let's listen to shakers, snaps, and hi-hat. Let's see how we can help that. (rhythmic drumming) Here's where the micropanning comes in. What I'm going to do is, I'm still going to keep it in stereo, I'm not going to make it as wide, though, and I'm going to put it out to the right. Now listen to it. (rhythmic drumming) Listen to it just by itself. (rhythmic drumming) Now we're onto the snaps. What we're going to do is pan the snaps just the opposite, and once again, the snaps are pretty wide, so what I'm going to do is, I just want a sliver of the stereo spectrum, just a sliver dedicated to it. But again, since this is in stereo, I'm going to try to keep some width as well, and you can see micropanning here. Here we go. (rhythmic drumming) Now, again, with the hat, let me do the same thing. We're going to pan it to the right. Actually, I think I like this better. If I go shaker to the left, and the hi-hat to the right makes a little more sense. And the snaps, we'll keep on the same side as the hat. Put it like this. Once again, take notice, there's not a whole lot of stereo spectrum that we're taking up. But it's just enough to make it interesting and to carve out a little space for each instrument. (rhythmic drumming) See, it's a lot more interesting now, and what we're finding right here is that all of a sudden, instruments that had covered on another up before are now becoming a lot clearer. Let's add the acoustic guitars in. Take notice, they're in mono and they're straight up the middle. ("Happy Birthday" by Patricia Bahia) Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to start to spread these out, but I'm going to listen to everything at the same time and try to find a space where they work and don't cover up anything else. ("Happy Birthday" by Patricia Bahia) Take notice, I didn't do a whole lot of panning, I just came off a little bit on each side, but it really widened up. And now you can hear all of those instruments in the mix really well. ("Happy Birthday" by Patricia Bahia) Then we're going to go to the ukeleles. There's two of them, and it's kind of the same thing. They're doubled, one is up the middle, well, both of them are up the middle, and we'll just try to pan 'em so they're a little bit different than what we have on the acoustic guitars and also the percussion. ("Happy Birthday" by Patricia Bahia) Now, take notice, all of a sudden, everything just got a lot clearer. We didn't add any EQ, we didn't add any more compression, we didn't do anything except, oh, and we didn't change the balance, either, of anything, all we did was changed the panning. Listen again from the beginning. ("Happy Birthday" by Patricia Bahia) Now we have some strings and flutes, and once again, what we're going to try to do is balance those out. So we have a wide stereo spectrum, but everything is in its own space. So these come in towards the end of this section. ("Happy Birthday" by Patricia Bahia) One more time, again, you can see where we're panned here. If you look at the guitars, right here, we're panned a little to the left and a little to the right. One's at 17, the other's at 20. If you look at the ukes, they're both at 31, left and right. If we look at this, we're at 44. We can actually just bring that back, so it's a little closer to the middle, 37. So sometimes, just one or two clicks is plenty. So, to summarize the magic micropanning trick, the first thing is, you want to leave the main focal points in the center of the stereo spectrum. So, in other words, that's whatever's the lead instrument. The vocal, the solos, for instance. Anything with extreme low frequency information, like kick drum and bass, all those things will go into the center, but everything else, you can start to pan away from the center ever so slightly. You're just going a couple ticks at a time, and really, what you need to do is find a space in the stereo spectrum for each of the elements, and there may only be a couple tics different from a previous track, but you'll find that just giving each instrument its own little space in the stereo spectrum will make everything seem to fit better in the mix, and yet you'll hear everything in a lot more cohesive and defined way.
Contents
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The Abbey Road reverb trick6m 7s
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The Real NYC compression trick8m 52s
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The secret to "punchy" drums6m
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Give your vocal an awesome airy sound4m 13s
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Dr. Pepper 1176 setting4m 8s
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Low-volume listening for a great mix balance6m 59s
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The secret SSL buss compressor setting4m 36s
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Using a short reverb for a massive sound5m 43s
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Make your mixes hot and loud10m 11s
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The Van Halen guitar sound trick5m 40s
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Give your bass some low-end definition5m 42s
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Make your vocal shine with a stereo delay7m 13s
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Add some excitement to your boring pad tracks5m 2s
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Make your programmed hi-hat come alive5m 37s
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Get that old-school delay feedback5m 33s
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Eliminate unwanted track noises like the pros4m 37s
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Short reverb decay is your friend5m 17s
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The 1176 British "nuke" setting4m 8s
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The mono spring vocal surprise4m 6s
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Put some "smack" in your snare1m 52s
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"Space" for your keyboard tracks3m 1s
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The secret to panning background vocals3m 35s
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The “nail In the paddle” rock kick sound3m 57s
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The Hank Marvin multihued delay trick4m 21s
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Emphasizing the beat with a pumping rhythm guitar5m 17s
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Simulating a tape delay6m 45s
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Parallel compression for punch with dynamics7m 26s
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How to get reverse reverb7m 48s
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Tweak your track timing like the pros6m 9s
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The biggest sound from the shortest delay3m 53s
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The ultimate 80s guitar room sound3m 7s
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Taming the picked bass5m 18s
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The secret to gated drums4m 50s
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The exploding snare trick4m 11s
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The awesome double-effect trick3m 33s
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The moving filter trick3m 9s
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The terrific timed reverb trick7m 48s
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Acoustic guitar peak limiter trick4m 39s
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The Tommy Lee thunder drums trick5m 6s
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The mono listening trick5m 1s
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The pitchy vocal coveruo trick3m 48s
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Tighten up releases4m 1s
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The large and thick background vocal trick3m 31s
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The legendary layered reverbs trick6m 33s
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Bones Howe 1176 setting4m 17s
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The big pad reverb trick4m 26s
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Effective effects automation5m 33s
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Eliminating clicks and pops3m 35s
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EQing the mix buss4m 49s
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The magic of mono reverb5m 9s
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Adding presence with flanging3m 58s
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Insanely big room sound4m 19s
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EQ your vocal with multiband compression4m 19s
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The Abbey Road double-track trick5m 28s
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The secret Pultec bass setting3m 42s
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Increase your background vocal energy3m 13s
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EQing the perfect club kick2m 34s
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Another exploding snare trick4m
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Perfect DI and mic'd bass phase3m 34s
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Finding the Elton John piano sound4m 39s
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Effecting the effects5m 41s
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Panning outside the speakers5m 25s
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The wisdom of dotted and triplet delays4m 42s
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Increase your room mic presence5m 15s
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The dbx 160 punchy drum setting6m 8s
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Dual untimed vocal slaps5m 3s
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Tuning the kick to the song4m 28s
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De-essing the reverb4m 36s
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Let's hear it for mid-side processing3m 54s
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Dial in your low end with an RTA5m 36s
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Add some air to that piano5m 55s
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Lock the feel of the bass and kick4m 41s
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Swept midrange guitar trick5m 16s
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Hat pad trigger trick4m 9s
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Big thump snare3m 57s
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Single word delay3m 48s
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Drum replacement4m 47s
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Keyboard life4m 4s
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Balance kick and bass8m 51s
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Ducked reverb5m 52s
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Autopanning5m 38s
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Tame peaky acoustic guitar5m 9s
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Snare ambience5m 3s
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Pitchy vocal4m 13s
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Snappy snare4m 58s
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Super big reverb5m 52s
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Spectral widening4m 37s
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Clean overheads4m 38s
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Argo vocals4m 21s
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EMT short room6m 19s
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Massive snare5m 1s
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Compressed reverb4m 30s
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Bass wide4m 47s
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Vocal control3m 42s
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Compressed guitars5m 26s
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Snappy snare4m 47s
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Dry vocals2m 44s
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Bass trigger4m 15s
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Hard snare4m 51s
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Drum phase3m 25s
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Floppy kick2m 56s
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Rough mix5m 58s
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Make your drums fills more dynamic3m 23s
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The filter boost technique3m 5s
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Add some sizzle to your snare3m 3s
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That big wide guitar sound5m 53s
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Hear every hat nuance4m 25s
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Micropan for greater track separation8m 33s
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Make those toms bombastic5m 11s
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The power of the high-pass filter3m 53s
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Add some ambience to your percussion5m 9s
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Flat fader mixing8m 45s
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Get control of your cymbals2m 16s
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