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Embaressing "mono" and bonus question

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 3:20 pm
by theviewer1985
Considering i been in the business proffessionally for 6 years now, I feel extremely ashamed to ask such a idiotic question

Mono - we all know what mono means.... but lets say i take for example, a mono snare, and pan it left.... it doesnt have any stereo spread. But it isn't playing center either, does that still mean its mono?

Its based on the fact that with all my research over the years, i always read that drums are good in mono, but also that they should be panned to give space

I have never read the words anywhere that a sound "should be mono AND panned center" which would have answered my question!

BONUS QUESTION: I always group my drums, and i guess most of you do aswell. And i add some compression on that group to gel them. But what classes as a drum? Is it literally everything, from cowbells, claps to kicks? Or is it just kick, snare, hats and other sounds like toms, claps and bongos should remain outside the group.

Re: Embaressing "mono" question

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 3:30 pm
by LeifonMars
The original mono sample is mono no matter how you pan it in the project you're working on. In case you want to bounce your mono drum sample and still keep it's panning position, you have to bounce it in stereo, which makes the outcome...well stereo.

Re: Embaressing "mono" question

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 3:38 pm
by theviewer1985
LeifonMars wrote:The original mono sample is mono no matter how you pan it in the project you're working on. In case you want to bounce your mono drum sample and still keep it's panning position, you have to bounce it in stereo, which makes the outcome...well stereo.

Ok thanks... so with the advice i follow that "your drums should be mono" - that means i use mono samples, but can still pan them however i please. Aslong as the individual hits dont have stereo spread..

Re: Embaressing "mono" question

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 3:55 pm
by LeifonMars
theviewer1985 wrote:
LeifonMars wrote:The original mono sample is mono no matter how you pan it in the project you're working on. In case you want to bounce your mono drum sample and still keep it's panning position, you have to bounce it in stereo, which makes the outcome...well stereo.

Ok thanks... so with the advice i follow that "your drums should be mono" - that means i use mono samples, but can still pan them however i please. Aslong as the individual hits dont have stereo spread..
Don't know about this "your drums should be in mono" advice. It doesn't sound good to me, maybe it is for a special genre I'm not familiar with.

But in order to keep the whole drum kit "mono" (i.e. center) in your mix, which I assume will be in stereo, you must keep the panning of all the drums in the center and avoid any plug ins that might introduce stereo width (like reverb, unless you manipulate that to mono as well).

I wouldn't worry about such rules that much. Keeping certain hits, especially kicks, narrow (mono) and centered is a good thumb rule, however, it should not stop you from experimenting.

Re: Embaressing "mono" and bonus question

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 4:48 pm
by swishniak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxsShtF7 ... re=related

read somewhere that ALL HIS TRACKS are mono. not sure if thats true but it sounds like this is (also in hi-q youtoob).

but the mono thing for bass / snare / kick definitely works on the dancefloor.

Re: Embaressing "mono" question

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 10:36 pm
by shacoca
LeifonMars wrote:
theviewer1985 wrote:Ok thanks... so with the advice i follow that "your drums should be mono" - that means i use mono samples, but can still pan them however i please. Aslong as the individual hits dont have stereo spread..
Don't know about this "your drums should be in mono" advice. It doesn't sound good to me, maybe it is for a special genre I'm not familiar with.
agreed. i think the "drums in mono" advice refers to centering the drums you normally want dominant in your mix–usually kicks and snares. that's all about panning. with your samples, there's no reason they have to be mono. (though mono samples cut down disk traffic.) if you have a sample with a nice with a stereo spatial thing going on, there's no reason you need to collapse it to mono. if it sits in the mix nicely, boom, done! if it doesn't play nicely with the rest of the kit, summing is an option. use stereo samples if you want. and for panning, start with kick and snare centered. but experiment all you want.

if your drum grouping has been working for you, then it's right. any instruments you can classify as "drums" will likely change with each situation. (maybe that cowbell wants it's own whole group! why not?) and if you wanted to yank a snare out of a drum group off by itself for some reason (cuz it did something bad :wink: ), you wouldn't be wrong. in the end, it's all about the organization that will best help you navigate your session. make any arrangement that makes sense to you and is easy to use. Live's internal "patch bay" can accommodate pretty much any layout you want. that's all said assuming you're the only one dealing with the layout. if you're passing off, you might wanna adhere a bit more to a standard. but if something non-standard is good for all involved, so be it. and labels, colors, track order can always be changed at any time to suit anyone's taste.

no rules! traditions, maybe. but break 'em. give your track what it requires.

Re: Embaressing "mono" and bonus question

Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 1:28 am
by synnack
in traditional acoustic kit production, you'd pan the tom toms and floor drum. This was to mimic the experience of actually hearing them in a room there the toms were spread across a kit and the floor drum was on one side and the kick and snare were in the center of the kit.

this doesn't make the individual drums "stereo" but the experience of listening to the overall drum mix occupies a stereo field.

Although the idea of panning a snare hit all the way left or right unless it was some sort of accent sounds annoying, rules are meant to be broken. Do what you think is right for your track.

Re: Embaressing "mono" and bonus question

Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 1:42 am
by fishmonkey
theviewer1985 wrote:Considering i been in the business proffessionally for 6 years now, I feel extremely ashamed to ask such a idiotic question

Mono - we all know what mono means.... but lets say i take for example, a mono snare, and pan it left.... it doesnt have any stereo spread. But it isn't playing center either, does that still mean its mono?

Its based on the fact that with all my research over the years, i always read that drums are good in mono, but also that they should be panned to give space

I have never read the words anywhere that a sound "should be mono AND panned center" which would have answered my question!
a true stereo sample is recorded with a pair of stereo mics. that said, once you've panned a mono sample, in the final mix it's not really mono anymore, since the illusion of some kind of stereo is created by the panning.

on a related note, you may be surprised to learn that many engineers primarily use an LCR method where everything (or almost everything) is always panned completely left, completely right or dead centre. this is partly because pan pots use a very crude method of moving sounds around, since they only change the level difference in each channel.

there's some great info on the "phantom image" here:

http://www.moultonlabs.com/more/princip ... _image/P0/