I often use the audience standpoint for panning drums. However, like most everything else about this craft it's highly subjective.

Totally subjective!
Tell that person all your past recordings was a left handed drummer & therefore is "correct". :roll:
Do what you think is cool or what your client wants.

Cheers
Sean

The thoughtful folks at Yamaha kindly pre-panned all the drum sounds in their RX21 drum machine from the drummer's perspective.

So I just reverse the outputs :D

I do it from the drummer's perspective. I personally want feel as if I'm in the band when I listen to music.

Audience perspective!

I think you'll begin to see from the responses so far that it's, well, ya know. Which color is better - red, or blue?

I am actually a panning freak, and I usually know how I am going to pan a song almost from the time I start recording it. When I was working pro I listened to a lot of albums, and realized I had been panning drums from the drummers perspective for years, and that all commercial albums at the time did it from the audiences perspective. So I switched. These days, whenever I hear drums that are panned backwards it sounds unnatural to me.

It makes sense that a record should be like a stage that you are watching (or listening to).

But the truth is, it doesn't really matter. If for some reason you have a mix where it sounds better the other way - the ceiling isn't going to fall down because you pan them the other way.

Audience :)

By the way - they are backwards (drummer's perspective) on the Zoom HD recorders, too. You would think that when making a commercial product someone would think to ask "which way do most hit records do it?".

My drummer is left handed so you tell me!

"usually" it's audience perspective but it doesn't matter.

When I'm getting sounds many times I record it as drummers perspective for me and the drummer (it's wierd in the cans to have it audience perspective when your playing drums). Then when I final mix, I flip it around.

I pan according to the old Phil Spector perspective: MONO! 8)

I once heard that people are accustomed to movement from left to right, and thus swing better to tom rolls moving in that direction as well.

After doing some tests, I think I personally agree. But then again, it could be just placebo at work.

If you think about it, "audience perspective" is really mono...how often are you close enough to the drums if you're in the audience that you hear them in any sort of stereo at all?

-Duardo

I agree with the mono principle for drums. Very rarely I might pan the hats slightly right but only if it's a funky 16th pattern.

Then again each to their own, whatever works is good too!

I always pan from the drummer's perspective- i think that the listener enjoys the sense of "being" in the band or "standing backstage" - it makes them feel as if they're more involved in the music- more imerssive, if you will.

Hey Wafuradio, are you a drummer? I would never have thought to pan from the drummers perspective. I do it from the audiences' perspective for the most part. Snare and kick are basically right down the center-- skewed slightly off to get movement in the "boom, chick, boom, chick" or something like that sometimes. But I like the cymbals and toms going wide, so I play with the panning of the overheads depending on what the drummer did and what the song calls for. I favor the four mic technic so that is about it.

Like I said, I am something of a panning freak - and when I was doing more sessions I always tried to set the bed track players in my room in the same position I planned to pan them - drums & bass middle, two rhythm instruments at opposite ends, etc. That way any ambient reflections in the room stayed truer to form. Same with overdubs if I was doing a large horn session, for example.

"If you think about it, "audience perspective" is really mono...how often are you close enough to the drums if you're in the audience that you hear them in any sort of stereo at all?"

You are basically correct, but a lot of live concerts now have stereo mixes and the drums are usually panned audience perspective when they do.

But also speaking psychologically about live shows - a promoter once said to me "most people listen with their eyes," and I think it would cause a mental disconnect in a live setting *if* the mix is stereo, to have them panned the opposite way from the way the drummer appears to be playing. Therefore, if I had a lefthand drummer in a live situation, I would probably pan them left to right.

And the tendency for people to naturally want events to occur left to right (because we read that way) I think is valid, and that is why I think drums sound "cooler" going the other way - it's like "wow, that drummer can play backwards!" I know it seems silly, but it a real thought process I went through.

And if you think about it, it is "backwards" to pan drums from the audience perspective when we pan pianos from the player's perspective - like I believe 99% of us do.

musicalhair wrote: Hey Wafuradio, are you a drummer? I would never have thought to pan from the drummers perspective. I do it from the audiences' perspective for the most part...

i am not a drummer... but i always loved getting behind the kit and "playing". when i started recording music, i wanted to capture in the speakers what i heard behind the kit... recording from the audience's perspecitve never crossed my mind. it is very interesting to read how everyone else is trying to present drums to the listener.

Depends.

I will put the hats were they work best with what is happening oposite of them.

And if you think about it, it is "backwards" to pan drums from the audience perspective when we pan pianos from the player's perspective - like I believe 99% of us do.

Okay....Left = Low, Right = High. Therefore the floor tom should be on the left, and rack tom on the right! :D
And a (real) piano on stage is usually placed sideways. So the audience perspective would be: low strings "distant", high strings "close". Ha! :lol:

Ah, another of the endless debates!

Drummers perspective was a "European" thing, audience perspective was an "American" thing, at least it was back in the '70s. Since I loved all the progressive stuff coming out of bands like Yes, ELP, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Strawbs, Nektar, etc., I fell into the drummers perspective because that sounded right to me.

I flipped around to the audience perspective for a while just so I didn't get complaicent; it forced me to think just a little differently and helped me become a better engineer.

Sometimes mono is the way to go. Currently I'm on a drummers perspective thing, but panned 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock, not wide like I used to.

Every project is different, so I will approach each one differently. I've even gone so far as to flip between drummer, audience and mono from song to song on a project to give each song a different flavor. I even tried a few drums and backing vox on one side, instruments on the other with the lead vox in the center a la early Beatles mixes. Even if things like that don't work, it gives a fresh perspective on a track you've been working on too long.

I recently was listening to an old Amy Mann track. Drums, bass and lead vox were centered, guitars were panned hard left, strings and piano were panned hard right. Listening to one channel or the other revealed two entirely different songs. One had more edge, the other more passion.

jodyjfk wrote: And a (real) piano on stage is usually placed sideways. So the audience perspective would be: low strings "distant", high strings "close". Ha! :lol:

Only if it's on the left hand side :wink:

Of course, those of us who possess a seperate monitoring section can quite easily pan the drums to the drummer's perspective for foldback to the drummer, and to the audience perspective for printing :D

captaininvisible wrote: [quote=jodyjfk]And a (real) piano on stage is usually placed sideways. So the audience perspective would be: low strings "distant", high strings "close". Ha! :lol:

Only if it's on the left hand side :wink:

Well, if it were Keith Emerson playing many years ago, it would be a doppler perspective (him and his spinning grand!) .