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Spektakulatius: Wayfaring Stranger
#21
I guess that the biggest group of people to whom the orientation of drums in the mix really matters are the drummers who love to play airdrums while listening the music. They really need the drummers perspective or the whole fun for them is ruined.

And then there’s a very small elitist listening group who have their special demands on every small detail. And none of us here can fullfill those requirements. Maybe only Al Schmitt could be good enough on that area.

When it comes to multimike techinques I think that there’s no strictly natural space anymore. Maybe ”somewhat natural illusion” can be achieved. But who cares, I’m quite sure that most of the time the illusion sounds better than the natural space. And if it sounds good, it’s good.
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#22
(28-05-2015, 01:37 PM)Stefanos Ioannou Wrote: I find your arrogance appalling, especially given that you are wrong.

Thanks for your thoughts, but that could have been a little more diplomatic... Please play nice, this is important discussion.

Back to the thread.

I certainly understand panning the low piano keys left and high piano keys right, but even still... in concert hall or typical jazz club, the keys of a grand piano are often angled nonparallel to the audience... and those venues also tend to be very diffusely ambient.

My brother is a classically trained concert pianist, so Terms of Reference, yeah? I completely understand Dave's opinion on the matter, but there are still reasons one might consider the stereo spread (or even spacial ambiguity) on a piano a matter of personal taste.

Maybe I have stone ears, but in context I don't think I'd be able to contrive a neat stereo spread across the keyboard at a concert hall, jazz venue, or even some churches, amidst horns, drums, bass, and a miked vocalist. When a grand piano is so often angled relative to the audience, and may face the audience or away depending on the needs of the venue... and will most certainly exhibit specular reflections off the open lid(!), it could be argued that in many live situations, some spacial ambiguity is the norm, at least for grand piano... a huge part of the instrument's range is completely non-directional minus the transient anyway. I once complimented a live engineer, years before I got serious about mixing, on his panning. Embarrassingly, it turned out that he'd mixed it in mono and I was contriving a stereo spread from purely visual cues...

Now don't get me wrong... the desire to pan the overheads and piano as described is completely understandable... in many situations I'd certainly want exactly what Dave suggested! It certainly results in a cleaner presentation, but it could be argued that club jazz is anything but clean in this regard, depending on the venue. As a matter of vision, imagining a jazz club for instance, some level of spacial ambiguity could be argued to be much more realistic than a neat and tidy stereo image that could never possibly occur in nature. So to imply that one doesn't know or doesn't care may or may not be true... depending on his vision for the mix? What about a live venue outdoors, perhaps in a courtyard? There wouldn't be much in the way of useful binaural detail at that level unless the listener was the one playing the piano.

Anyway, just conversation. I'm not knocking any particular approach, but I am defending Juanjose's approach as perfectly valid.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#23
I play in a band and my drummer is left hand
I play most of the time in front of him, so for me sounds natural hear the hihat to the left that corresponds to the usual drum perspective

But even if we would be really purist, also audience perspective is wrong in our mixing job

Drums are usually so far from the listener, we should pan the close mics dead center and pan hard left and right just the rooms mics

We always recreate an artificial space, we love feel ourself on stage with the band and at the end, like someone said, if it sounds good, sounds good

my 2 cents

P.S. nice mix Smile
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#24
If it sounds better audience perspective, if it sounds better, drummer perspective.
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#25
I've just taken a quick listen to all of the mixes of this song, I like yours the most sofar. Nice work man
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#26
(28-05-2015, 02:35 PM)pauli Wrote:
(28-05-2015, 01:37 PM)Stefanos Ioannou Wrote: I find your arrogance appalling, especially given that you are wrong.

Thanks for your thoughts, but that could have been a little more diplomatic... Please play nice, this is important discussion.

Back to the thread.

I certainly understand panning the low piano keys left and high piano keys right, but even still... in concert hall or typical jazz club, the keys of a grand piano are often angled nonparallel to the audience... and those venues also tend to be very diffusely ambient.

My brother is a classically trained concert pianist, so Terms of Reference, yeah? I completely understand Dave's opinion on the matter, but there are still reasons one might consider the stereo spread (or even spacial ambiguity) on a piano a matter of personal taste.

Maybe I have stone ears, but in context I don't think I'd be able to contrive a neat stereo spread across the keyboard at a concert hall, jazz venue, or even some churches, amidst horns, drums, bass, and a miked vocalist. When a grand piano is so often angled relative to the audience, and may face the audience or away depending on the needs of the venue... and will most certainly exhibit specular reflections off the open lid(!), it could be argued that in many live situations, some spacial ambiguity is the norm, at least for grand piano... a huge part of the instrument's range is completely non-directional minus the transient anyway. I once complimented a live engineer, years before I got serious about mixing, on his panning. Embarrassingly, it turned out that he'd mixed it in mono and I was contriving a stereo spread from purely visual cues...

Now don't get me wrong... the desire to pan the overheads and piano as described is completely understandable... in many situations I'd certainly want exactly what Dave suggested! It certainly results in a cleaner presentation, but it could be argued that club jazz is anything but clean in this regard, depending on the venue. As a matter of vision, imagining a jazz club for instance, some level of spacial ambiguity could be argued to be much more realistic than a neat and tidy stereo image that could never possibly occur in nature. So to imply that one doesn't know or doesn't care may or may not be true... depending on his vision for the mix? What about a live venue outdoors, perhaps in a courtyard? There wouldn't be much in the way of useful binaural detail at that level unless the listener was the one playing the piano.

Anyway, just conversation. I'm not knocking any particular approach, but I am defending Juanjose's approach as perfectly valid.

Hmmm. Maybe what I had for this song is different than others, but I had only one stereo track for the Piano so the panning within that was already set. What I did do was listen to the bleed in all of the stereo tracks and use that as a key to panning in the stereo field. Some of the arguments I've read on panning here I think is dependent on the size of the space you would imagine this to be played in. For me it was a small or medium club with me (the audience) being in the front row and having a stereo field based upon where the players were on the stage. True stereo as I would consider I was not listening to a PA when this was performed. This allowed me to pan the stereo piano to the right of my mix and the sax to the left. Not only did this bring both instruments into finer focus without the need to added EQ or compression, but it also left space to the vocal.
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