After too many years of contemplation, I finally decided to transfer all of my old original songs (recorded with keyboards and sound modules long before the Motif came along), from 4 track tape to the computer. While this process has been arduous at best (I have over a hundred songs to move), it's also been very educational, and reinforced mixing and mastering concepts I have learned in recent years--concepts every producer should be aware of. The first and foremost of those is creating "space" to give one's songs that polished sound typically absent in amateur
mixes.
This article is part one of a multi part series to shed some light on mixing concepts and how to easily work them into your Yamaha Motif sequencer creations. This particular article will focus on panning.
When I first started listening to my old songs, one thing became apparent immediately: they all sounded "dry" and lifeless through my JBL LRS monitors. I quickly realized I had made some rookie mistakes when I originally recorded them. Most notably I had recorded every track "right up the middle," (there was little to no panning of instruments), failed to use dynamic processing (i.e. compression to tame instrument peaks and bring up quieter notes), and as a result had a collection of songs that didn't inspire and/or engage my listeners--well geez no wonder my songs kept getting rejected by Jive records back in 1992!! Amazing what you learn over the years. Guess this is one of the pitfalls of being completely self taught; you learn everything the hard way.
So let's talk PANNING. In the stereo spectrum we have two channels: left and right. Between the most extreme points of both sides lies a huge chasm that must be "filled" by the producer to create a substantive 3D-like sound for listeners. To "fill" this chasm, we must manually pan our recorded instruments to different positions to emulate how instruments might be physically positioned on a stage or in a live studio environment.
So let's sum this up: Good use of panning spreads instruments out across the stereo spectrum from left to right in a stage-style arrangement; but NO panning stacks all the instruments "right in the middle" of the stage, creating a very unpleasant, uninspiring, and even annoying experience for the listener.
When you're really close to your own music, it's often difficult to be objective. So, to understand what a non-panned mix sounds like to your listeners, picture a stage where a guitar amp, a bass amp, and a keyboard amp are all stacked on top of each other center stage with no speakers to their left or right at all.... with the drummer teetering on top of the stack! How would this sound? Words like confusing, clamorous, and obnoxious should come to mind.
How to pan instruments in your Motif? Easy: when in song, pattern or performance mode, in the Motif Classic and ES press the MIXING>VOICE buttons (in the XS just press the MIXING button), and set the pan position for each instrument left or right. Mix to taste. Listen to professional songs and compare yours to those. Listening to older recordings--such as those from Steely Dan, which are textbook mixing studies in their own rite--at your desk through computer speakers or through headphones is a great way to learn how instruments are panned by the pros.
Basic rules:
- Bass sounds (bass drum and bass guitar) should NOT be panned at all because low frequencies are "non directional," so keep them at Center position.
- Snares usually stay in the middle
- Hi hats and other drums sounds are generally moderately panned left and right to emulate the position of each in a drum set--although I have heard recordings where an, e.g., shaker, is panned to the extreme left.
- Make sure you do not pan like-sounding instruments to the same side. For example, if you have a guitar and a piano in your song, send the guitar to the right and the piano to the left. This will improve their unique presence in your mix immensely. Often times you will hear a producer say "let's get that piano out of the way of that guitar." What they mean is that the piano needs to be panned or compressed or EQ'd (topics I will cover in upcoming articles) to make a "hole" for the guitar to be heard.
