Spektakulatius: Wayfaring Stranger

[The_Metallurgist]

My personal opinion RE: piano and sax panning: it makes sense to me to pan them as you have IMO because it matches their relative position in the overheads and tom mics. You could stereo swap the mix if you're concerned about audience perspective/drummers perspective.

i'll cover this in my mix notes when i post my thread.

I personally wouldn't worry about it... having been in a band for a few years with a left handed drummer who set his kit up in reverse, it really doesn't seem like a problem to me.

people will generally do what suits them, but as mixers, we have an audience and listeners to think about, not simply mix according to our own personal views....views perhaps which can be based on ignorance.

Lots of engineers regard the stereo positioning on the overheads as a matter of personal taste because most listeners really don't have a clear expectation in this regard..

this is an assumption.

surely we are in the game of providing an "illusion of space". if the illusion is flawed, the mix is flawed. i know for a fact, that some mixing engineers are unable to mix drums unless they place themselves on a virtual drum stool. i don't know if it's because the engineers themselves were/are drummers of course, but i dare say it's but one factor. virtual drum kits are offered from the drummer's perspective, no doubt for this same reason. one cannot argue that it's heaps more mentally comfortable when programming virtual drums, to do so from the virtual drum stool than mixing them without trying to think the opposite. the same can be said for a real kit. and it simply ends up being printed. this has nothing to do with personal taste, and everything to do with ease and practicalities!

furthermore, with the loss of professional studios and professional mixers along with them, the ethos, and indeed the mixing etiquette, is being lost to self-taught individuals who's focus isn't on the listener so much as it is perhaps on their own artistry....and at a fundamental level of capturing the performance. many of the modern genres EDM for example, have a total and utter disregard for illusions of space, space that is, in a normal sound-stage delivery.....but create a fantasy environment where anything goes. but i hear more drum kits the wrong way around today than i've ever done in 4 decades of critical listening. and i think the demise of the professional is partly the reason for it - a disregard for "attention to detail". so long as the beats happenin' an' slammin' and there's a drum noise going down of sorts, who cares? sorry, but i do, IF THE GENRE CALLS FOR IT

and this genre does.

the same ethos/etiquette exists for a piano....should the low keys be to the right or left? i bet you don't know. and i bet you don't care. but you'd care if someone EQ'd your guitar in a manner that disagreed with "your taste" and expectations; you'd be in your rights to do so, of course.

and many of them don't use the same orientation across their work. Food for thought on the matter if anyone is interested... read up on Carter Beauford's (of Dave Matthew's Band) unorthodox drum setup and playing style... then note that across their voluminous body of work, the stereo orientation of drums isn't consistently the same or even similar.

"unorthodox", you said it. one person does something totally outside the statistical norm (at the 3-sigma level) doesn't make the case for breaking norms or justifying a lack of attention to detail and ignoring what a listener's expectations are. their expectations are for norms. if we present a listener with something outside of their expectations, it will be, by default, a distraction. and as we all should know as mixers, aspiring or otherwise, ANYTHING that distracts (other than for creative reasons) is to be avoided at all costs. why? simply because it causes the listener to disengage from the delivery of the music.... and the EMOTIONAL CONNECTION gets broken and lost. it's like being in the full throws of intimacy, then the doorbell rings!

i've heard a professional debate (i wish i could quote by way of reference, but it was some time ago....i can only remember the essence and conclusion, sadly...sorry!) about left handed drummers and whether they should be mixed accordingly. going back to my point about the "illusion of space" once more, people's expectation is to hear a right handed drummer in the majority of occasions (assuming they know how a typical drum kit is set up). the debate concluded that the kit would be presented in the mix as people would expect - right handed. the conclusion was based on the fact of expectation....and a listener is less likely to know if the drummer is left handed.

i have no idea what Carter does with his kit, but i'd bet my pension that his hat is to his left and the floor tom to his right...unless he's a left hooker. simply finding the one event out of 1000 that doesn't fit statistical norms (3-sigma, in a normal frequency distribution curve) to support one's argument, isn't appropriate i'd suggest. we all know people who lived to be over 100 years of age and smoked, but this doesn't mean we should all smoke if we want to live to be 100.

Didn't stop them from selling a smackload of records though

and neither did it stop people buying crappy distorted music in lossy format....and being victims of the Loudness War. money talks, that's the bottom line perhaps. and so long as unprofessional mixing engineers can produce drums the wrong way round and sell enough product while being oblivious to the fact that some of their more educated and informed listeners are irritated by their lack of concern, then it will get worse. doing things wrong i.e. PRESENTING AN INCORRECT ILLUSION OF SPACE, becomes a standard of acceptance....wrong becomes the norm.....just like the loudness war.

i will mix my kit the right way round and not have any listeners distracted by that. you will mix them how they come....and disregard those listeners who will be distracted. it's your choice, but i don't understand your disregard for a [more informed] listener's needs. that's REALLY bad marketing! it's also disrespectful, i'd tentatively suggest.

... is a [good] mix I'd listen to without complaint.

and that's where we differ; it's a question of standards perhaps.

at a fundamental level, the illusion of space, as it's presented herein, is incorrect for some of the reasons i've touched upon in my earlier post. i'm being distracted because of it....the space isn't correct, and neither is the arrangement of the musician's equipment. we should all be aware by now, that if ANYTHING in a mix is a distraction, it will detract from the listener's ability to engage with the music. it matters here because of the genre, and importantly, because the band was seeking a more natural ambiance. this mix, with the choice of reverbs and ambiance and the illusion of sound stage as presented, isn't giving me the correct subjective image. indeed, i find it ambiguous and disconcerting. but my ears and brain have been around rather a long time than a lot of forum participants and it's formed my Terms of Reference.

at the techinical level, JJ has done a marvellous job and i wouldn't want this discussion to take those achievements away from him. but at the subjective level, regarding my interpretation of space and it's presentation, there's a problem and EVERYONE, there are no exceptions, have overlooked this herein and within their own mixes.

most here, if not all, are musicians (let's ignore the definitions of "musician") and bring with them their own "instrumental bias" to the mixing process. those who are drummers will want to mix their kit as they see it - from the drummer's stool. people who have their instrument bias in the direction of an acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, upright, sax, flute, violin or woteva, won't give a damn about the drum kit......

........and herein perhaps lies the root of the problem?