ThePhonk's mix

[ThePhonk]

My mix room is drier than most, and I'm monitoring very much in the nearfield, so that may make it more clearly audible here.

I couldn't even hear it on headphones

The vocal's panning of 4% to the right was intentional (not so sure about the reverb send on the bass), to counterbalance the guitar, which lives on the left.

Interesting reason, although not the one I'd expected. That kind of panning is pretty minimal, so while I would justify it in terms of slightly spreading the central sources to increase the sense of separation in stereo, I'm not sure it really counterbalances the guitar -- that's more the ukelele doing that.

Well, "counterbalance" was too strong a word. It's a homoeopathic dose of counterbalance, if you will. Here, I hear that the reverb works to my advantage, and makes the 4% sound like at least 4.8% ! But I agree with your verdict below.

To my ears, the ukulele alone does not fully counterbalance the guitar because it has somehow less 'structural weight'.

Untangling the center is something that I often try, but not this time. I did not see much reason.

Just had another glance at the project. There's some other unusual panning too -- both room mics 8% right, for instance. Not that it really poked me in the eye as being odd when I listened, so it's all pretty academic in practice -- a lot of stereo information's lost on most people anyway!

I panned the (stereo) overheads to center and then panned the (mono) rooms so that they matched the position of the overhead snare. I just tried this again and find that a) 8% is not far enough, it should be considerably more, and b) it might have been smarter to pan-match the ride, and perhaps cut the snare out of the overheads altogether.

Something else to revisit !

Marc