The stereo field

[Jim of Seattle]

Last night zoning out on the Ipod I started listening to songs just in terms of their use of the stereo field. I sometimes really love a great stereo spread.

Are there any songs you can name wherein the placement of instruments in the stereo field is actually one of the songs most appealing qualities? Bacharach, of all people, has the technique where all the instruments are panned way to the edges, and there's this instrumental intro, and then the lead vocal comes in smack center and instantly fills out the whole sound and it's just gorgeous.

Recently in my songs I've started learning that by speading (or narrowing) the stereo panning of just the drum track alone makes a huge difference. I'm going to start listening to this more in songs I like. Yet another way for someone to be musically expressive.

[Tonamel]

The spacial quality of my music is the one thing I always, always forget about. I'm not sure why, but I do it every time. And then when I'm "finishing" a track, I'll start wondering why it sounds so lifeless, and then I'm just "Oh. Right. I should pan something. Or several things. Or everything."

Good panning can make ALL the difference in a track.

[deshead]

Are there any songs you can name wherein the placement of instruments in the stereo field is actually one of the songs most appealing qualities?

Other than ambient tracks designed to make you think you're sitting by a lake or in a field or what have you, I can't think of any examples where the stereo placement is a necessary component. However:

Stereo placement is integral to the overall sound in a lot of modern mixes, especially the hardcore stuff of the last 5 or 6 years where the guitars and bass are big and hard-panned, and the drums are mono down the middle. (I used to cite Thornley as a good example of this, but I'm going to start using Puce's I'm Not Impressed.) Mixes like that, while they can work in mono, really aren't meant to.

Also, it might be my imagination, but I've noticed a trend over the last decade away from strict mono compatability, towards a more artistic use of the stereo field in creating a soundscape. (I wonder if this is driven in part by the advent of 5.1 mixdowns, where engineers are forced to think in terms of the band's placement within the listener's living room.) The first thing that strikes me when the Smiths or Billy Idol (heh) pop up in my playlist is how much narrower the mixes were 20 years ago. Everything was either constrained to a 60 degree arc in the middle, or Left-Center-Right panned, George Martin-style. The stuff I enjoy from the last decade uses the full 180 degrees, with some stuff even delay-panned past the edges.

Two favorite examples are Doves, especially Some Cities (drool), and anything from Ryan Adams. Just a pleasure to slap on headphones, and explore the space in the mix.

[Southwest_Statistic]

Stereo placement is integral to the overall sound in a lot of modern mixes, especially the hardcore stuff of the last 5 or 6 years where the guitars and bass are big and hard-panned, and the drums are mono down the middle.

Actually in those heavy rock mixes, the bass is also mono and in the middle. 5.1 systems only put bass in the subwoofer if the bass signal matches between the left and right channels perfectly. The reason that guitar is hard panned stereo tracks is mostly just to clear up space for the vocal tracks. Guitar takes up a lot of similar frequency ranges to vocals, and hard panning the guitar tracks takes advantage of the way your brain processes sounds. The brain has the ability to internally amplify and make since of sounds (especially human vocal sounds) directly in front of you, and suppress the volume of sounds in the background. Often times the actual volume level of the guitar tracks exceeds the volume level of the vocal tracks.

[Jim of Seattle]

I remember an exhibit at a science museum in S.F. when I was about 12. You sat in front of two speakers, one on your left, one on your right. You push a button, and two separate spoken recordings come out, one out of each speaker. The point of the exhibit was how you could, without turning your head at all, simply choose to focus your mind on one speaker, then on the other, and go back and forth at will. It was an eye-opening experiment. One success story for those kid-centric science museums.

[deshead]

Actually in those heavy rock mixes, the bass is also mono and in the middle. 5.1 systems only put bass in the subwoofer if the bass signal matches between the left and right channels perfectly.

Hmm, that makes sense. I wonder if my ears are playing tricks on me, then, with the Thornley tracks I mentioned. The bass is definitely "wider" than the drums. Maybe they used something like the S1 shuffler on it.

point of the exhibit was how you could, without turning your head at all, simply choose to focus your mind on one speaker, then on the other, and go back and forth at will.

Kind of tangentially related, I stumbled on this article that has a great overview of how we perceive the stereo field from speakers, and how engineers can tweak our perception: http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.n ... s/spaceout

[Adam!]

S1 shuffler

Is it just me or is this thing only good for sound effects and destroying your mix?

I've tried double tracking and hard panning basses, but all it seems to do is make my mix sound unpredictable on different systems. Because bass wavelengths are too long to be able to locate psychoacoustically your ear hears bass without attributing any location information to it. My guess is they’ve done some trick to generate higher harmonics and separate them in stereo; Your ear pinpoints where these harmonics are coming from and tricks your brain into attributing that stereo seperation to the bass as well. Maybe.

[Jim of Seattle]

S1 shuffler

Is it just me or does anyone else not know what he's even talking about?

Man, I'm reading this stuff and realizing how LITTLE I know about production. Hell, I just record thingies, add some effects to them, pan them somewhere, turn them up or down, maybe, but usually not, EQ a tiny bit, and I'm done.

So now I'm wondering what my productions lack that they would have if I knew what the hell I was doing. This is all daunting stuff.

[erik]

S1 shuffler

Is it just me or does anyone else not know what he's even talking about?

You could always, y'know, google it and then learn stuff.

[Southwest_Statistic]

Actually in those heavy rock mixes, the bass is also mono and in the middle. 5.1 systems only put bass in the subwoofer if the bass signal matches between the left and right channels perfectly.

Hmm, that makes sense. I wonder if my ears are playing tricks on me, then, with the Thornley tracks I mentioned. The bass is definitely "wider" than the drums. Maybe they used something like the S1 shuffler on it.

It's not impossible to hard-pan the bass as occasional special effect, you just won't get enough signal to the sub.

Another thing that I guess you could do if you wanted to hard pan the bass is make 2 tracks for the bass guitar. One with everything below 600hz mono and in the center (subwoofer), and everything above it panned left or right (directional)

I just tried that little idea I had.

http://www.brusscom.com/misc/hard_panned_bass.mp3

[king_arthur]

Old Smokey Robinson and the Miracles stuff (and probably other Motown stuff, as well) is fun to listen to for the stereo split - horns happening on one side, strings on the other, stuff like that. Sometimes drums or bass even wind up hard panned, probably due to having to record with minimal numbers of tracks.

Spanky & Our Gang had a song called "Leopard Skin Phones" that was all about stereo separation, but it's just about impossible to find... "if you think that's earmuffs I've got on / it's a pair of personal leopard skin phones / initials in diamonds, the family crest / on the side of the switch that controls / the left side, the right side, the drums and the sounds of / la la la la la la la..."

I tried going for that sort of thing (Motown style panning) on one of my SF songs, "Gonna Be Your Man," I think, and everybody hated it. But it's fun to listen to when done out of necessity by people with talent.

Charles (Art is my middle name!)

[boltoph]

...with the Thornley tracks I mentioned. The bass is definitely "wider" than the drums. Maybe they used something like the S1 shuffler on it.

Geez, now I've got that Thornley song "Come Again" in my head and have to listen.
I think that the bass is indeed in the middle and the bit of "panned bass" that we're hearing is really just a certain tiny tiny reverb that is a stereo plugin on the mono bass track. Therefore the bass sound on the edges is really just the reverb. We're talking about a "small closet space" type of reverb. That's my take on this. I love putting that sort of stereo space on my bass track. I did it on Wish I Was So Sure because my drum L/R tracks got out of sync and the drums ended up hard left and right and I needed to get the bass to match that a little. Although the quality of my recording doesn't even touch Thornley, I swear we have the exact same sort of bass tone....

[Sober]

"Suppose, now, we take the left channel, reverse the polarity, delay it a little bit, and inject a little of the delayed, inverted signal into the right speaker? The result is that the inverted, delayed signal is capable of actually canceling the sound from the left speaker before it reaches the right ear"

Hm.

Flogging Molly uses the exact same formula in every song: Drum'n'bass in the middle, accordion left, violin/tinwhistle right, guitar right, banjo/mandolin left, vocal middle. Every song. But - I tried this with headphones and a mom/stereo switcher - it works in mono just as well. Steve Albini's mixes just work that way.

I guess a good goal is for a mix to sound good in mono and stereo both.

[deshead]

Related to the above discussion about the perceived width of the bass tone, I just read this interview with Andy Wallace. It's filled with great tips, but the one that jumped out at me was his use of a symphonic effect on the bass guitar as a tool to get it "out of the middle."

Wallace is one of the architects of the modern big label radio sound. So while he didn't mix the Thornley album, I'll bet the same trick was used. (Yeah, it's similar to what Boltoph surmised, although a symphonic effect is usually a mix of stereo chorus and tremolo, but read the article anyway. It's good stuff.)

[WeaselSlayer]

I think Raw Power puts all the rhythm in one ear and the guitar and vocals in the other, and then Mogwai did the same for their Rock Action album as an homage. But the best stereo band is the Flaming Lips. Soft Bulletin has some mindblowing things going on on several different levels.

[bz£]

"Suppose, now, we take the left channel, reverse the polarity, delay it a little bit, and inject a little of the delayed, inverted signal into the right speaker? The result is that the inverted, delayed signal is capable of actually canceling the sound from the left speaker before it reaches the right ear"

Yeah, you can do ridiculous stuff with this: depending on the timing, you can make sound seem like it's coming from completely impossible places, like directly behind you, when you're facing both speakers. Or inside your head, which is creepy.

It breaks down completely in mono, of course, and it's pretty sensitive to speaker placement, but it's fun to play with.

[thehipcola]

Related to the above discussion about the perceived width of the bass tone, I just read this interview with Andy Wallace. It's filled with great tips, but the one that jumped out at me was his use of a symphonic effect on the bass guitar as a tool to get it "out of the middle."

Wallace is one of the architects of the modern big label radio sound. So while he didn't mix the Thornley album, I'll bet the same trick was used. (Yeah, it's similar to what Boltoph surmised, although a symphonic effect is usually a mix of stereo chorus and tremolo, but read the article anyway. It's good stuff.)

freakin' awesome article dude. Lots of great tips and techniques in there. I wonder what a guy like that charges to do a mix?

Thanks Des.

[Rabid Garfunkel]

Bowie's "Space Oddity" does the hard pan. IIRC, drums, bass & harmony vox on one side; lead vox and guitar on the other.

For attempting to teach yourself harmony vox, it's pretty killer.

[Adam!]

I was listening to Queens of the Stone Age on headphones, and I noticed that Song For The Dead has some crazy panning in it. Drums start out hard right, then center, then hard left for most of the song, and then center again for the ending. The right has backing vox, guitar, and tambourine. Vox and bass are the only thing in the center (I guess there's a guitar solo in there too at some point). The vocals are also drastically clipped throughout: not a stylish overdrive, but what sounds like actual mic clipping.

The weird thing is that I've heard this song in my car half a dozen times and I've never noticed any of this. I figure I'd at least notice something like a hard-panned kick and snare.

[Mogosagatai]

Oh man... "Song for the Dead" is the best use of repetition ever. I counted how many times they repeated the same fucking thing once, and I don't remember the number but I remember that it was ridiculously large. And yet, the song is somehow great.