Audio Recording

In mixing session, it is important to correctly pan guitar in the mix. Inappropriate panning can result to mud or unrealistic guitar sound.

This is a short tutorial on how to properly pan guitar in the mix. As a start, it is important that you will learn first the importance and concept of panning.

Panning is the process of assigning a location of musical instrument in the stereo spectrum. A stereo is characterized by:

a. Left channel
b. Right channel
c. Center

Numerically the center is assigned as “0” while the rightmost part of the channel is assigned as +100 and leftmost part channel as -100.

For example, if you assigned a certain musical instrument at panning setting of “0”, it means that you have assigned that instrument in the center of the stereo.

Panning is important because it is used by sound and mixing engineers to simulate live performance. These engineers vision stereo mixing as musicians playing on stage.

So it means that:

1.) The vocalist is at the center of the stage
2.) The drummer is at the center area also.
3.) The bass man is behind the vocalist and also at the center stage.
4.) At the right most is maybe the first guitarist of the band.
5.) While at the left most is the second guitarist.

The standard for panning acoustic or electric guitar must fall within:

Left channel: -50 to -100
Right channel: +50 to +100

And specifically:

a. If you need the guitar to be more punchy, strong and dominant, I will panned it at -50 , +50.
b. For background guitars which the sole purpose is for accompaniment with lots of instruments involved, you can pan it hard left and right (-100 and +100).
c. If there are 2 guitarist (lead and rhythm guitars), you can pan the lead guitar near to the center to give more “presence” in the mix (-50, +50) while the rhythm guitars will be placed at -100 and +100.

For more spacious, ambience and live feeling on the sound of the guitars, you can even put a delay between the left and right channel. So if the right channel is lag at 2ms from the left channel, this creates an illusion of wide stereo.

For best results with panning, you can record the guitar track twice, first place the 1st guitar on the left channel. Record the guitar track again and place it on the right channel. This creates a nice ambience very ideal for pop, acoustic and country recordings.