It really depends on the effect you're trying to achieve. Mixing on headphones is so different from mixing for speakers, because you can pan all the way to one side and it'll still fill the room when you're using speakers. If you are only using headphones, your mixes will sometimes have to be pulled in towards the center in order to give you proper spacial reference. Even in mixing for conventional speakers, I never pan completely to one side. I like to have one guitar track on each side, for rhythm stuff, and usually keys are stereo, then bass is center. Drums I like to mix from drummer's perspective, where highhats are on the left slightly, along with the high tom. Drum overheads you can usually pan pretty hard, but the toms, you want to keep a bit more centered. With vocals, I like to have the lead near center, and fill in with backups on either side, to fill it out. Just my humble thoughts, hope it helps. Kurt ----- Original Message ----- From: James Malone To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 11:29 AM Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Thoughts on panning? Hi Stephanie , Sometimes its good to hear different angles of panning, such as a b3 effect. It seems like all your keyboards already has a panning feature that you can hear in your head phones. When I'm either sitting or riding I like to check out a mix from a prerecorded track, and listen to some automated mixes such as panning EQ, and effect changes. Its really up to your imagination. To answer your question, I think panning at various degrees such as 25 percent left or 45 percent right is good, depending on how much sound you want out of each speaker. I like to think about how I would look hearing a drummer facing the drums. Placement is sometimes a good thing, and in my case of playing b3 organ, I like the stereo effect of two lessleys, even though I only have 1. James ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stephanie Pieck Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 8:40 AM To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ddots-l] Thoughts on panning? While I think the effects of panning are really cool, I'm curious to know what other people think of this question. If you are creating music that might be listened to using headphones, what is the most extreme panning you would use? For instance, if you have two electric guitar tracks or drum tracks, and you want to highlight the interplay between them by placing them on opposite sides of the mix, how far to the left and right is too far? Thanks for any ideas. Stephanie