PANNING FOR WIDTH

[Sam Wacker]

Ever been to a Yamaha keyboard demonstration and wondered why the sounds they get from your keyboard model seem better?  Now, the demonstrators are all good players, they would have to be at a certain skill level to represent a company like Yamaha. But is something else going on?

This is about checking and changing the PAN positions in the Style or MIDI file to improve the overall sound within the keyboard. It is not about using a DAW like Ableton, Cubase or Pro Tools among many others and plug-ins or AI to do this. That's another topic altogether. Understanding a little about frequencies is also helpful. You may even have downloaded 'cheat sheets' for this.

On a college course, we were taught to listen in MONO and mix in MONO. If the instruments have good separation in MONO they will sound fatter in STEREO. But before worrying about that go to the mixer and check -out the pan positions of each instrument (track, channel).  A few guitars in the style or MIDI? Pan them in opposite directions. They are likely to have similar frequencies. Drums, lead vocal and bass are all centred but you can use reverb delay, and EQ  to place them better.  Piano is often centred at 64. There's no magic bullet for this. It's about listening and seeing what settings work for you. Obviously, you can just use three basic positions Left 0, Centre 64 and Right 127 for a hard separation.

I'm  told that there is no fixed stage plan for Symphony Orchestras, although there does seem a convention like in the image below. (I know it's basic and does not include soloists). So, if you are using some of the amazing new classical styles - experiment.  For pop music of whatever genre think about stage plot (layout) but aim to be consistent. If not, it might appear that your lead guitarist is wandering all over the stage.    Or we can just accept what Yamaha or the individual MIDI has provided. No worries.

I use MUSICBEE for my audio collection. It has a 10-15 channel mixer. You can play your favourite tracks from artists you like and experiment with the frequencies. " But I always set everything flat" – that's ok too. Personal preferences.

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Any tips you want to share?