How to pan drum instruments?
In my recent post “Creating Realistic Stereo Image with Panning”, I have mentioned that the whole drum instruments can be panned somewhere -25 to +25 -12.5 to +12.5 settings.
There is a commenter on the post asking how to pan snare in the drums. In this post I will give my approach on how to pan drum instruments and parts (snares, toms, cymbals and hi hats).
Panning properly drums can create a very realistic drum sound in stereo.
Below are the most important components of a drum kit and it’s panning settings :
a. Kick drum – “0″, this means it is panned to the center. The reason for this is that the drum set is placed in the physical center of the stage and kick drum is in the center of the drum set. Below is how the band looks like playing live on the stage and take note the drum set is in the middle.
b. Snare- “+12.5 +6.25 right”, this means it is panned very slightly to the right. It is because looking at the real drum; it is located in the physical center between the hi-hats and to the center of the kick drum. Some engineers pan the snare to the center, but I do not recommend this since a significant frequency response of snare can drown the vocals.
c. Pedal hi hat- +25 “+12.5 right”, this the farthest right of the drums.
d. Crash cymbal- +18.75 +9.375 right”, it is located in the physical center between the snare drum and the hi hat.
e. Toom right – +6.25 “+3.2″, again very slightly off center to the right.
f. Toom left -6.25 “-3.2″, the pair of the other toom but this one panned to the left.
g. Floor toom- “-12.5″ -6.25, panned to the left and located in the physical center of the ride cymbal and the kick drum.
h. Ride cymbal- “-25″ -12.5 panned to the left, this is the leftmost part of the drum set.
So stereo drums needs around 8 tracks in the multi-track recording with each of the parts in the different panning settings for realistic stereo placement.
If you do not have real drums but has a recording mixing software
If you have problems in the process, please inform me by commenting on this post. Thank you.
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May 31st, 2008 at 7:43 am
Thank your for 1st picture…
i cleared my doubts with this post…
regards
October 27th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
i appreciate this post, very simple and logical to understand.
thank you
February 1st, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Hi Pej,
Thanks for reading also, and I appreciate your time in visiting my blog. Good luck in panning your drum instruments.
Regards,
Emerson
July 31st, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Hi,
Thanx for the great guide on panning.
I was only wondering if these ‘rules’ also apply making dance/house/electronical.
And if, how should I pan the clap? Same position as the snare?
Regards,
Matt
August 1st, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Hi Matt,
Thanks for reading the article, yes it can be applied to dance or other genre if you take a live stage perspective of your mix.
For the clap, it is of the same position as pedal hi hat..(see figure above).
August 5th, 2009 at 6:26 am
I prefer a wider panning on my drums, specially on toms and hihats because it makes those fierce fills with lots of 32ths notes really exciting. I like panning the hats almost halfway to either way to give it more presence. Though it can get a bit distracting some times if the song has not to many panned stuff.
Also, i prefer to use the “drummer perspective”, panning everything the other way around as you posted. This is just because I always wanted to play drums, and mixing them is the closest thing i get to.