Groove3 Panning Explained Review

In today’s review we take a look at Groove3’s latest tutorial – Panning Explained – which looks to help you enhance your mix…

Manufacturer Groove3
Price $25 download and stream.
Contact via website
Web www.groove3.com

A mix can only ever be truly great if you can master panning and stereo effects. This tutorial from Groove 3, by veteran producer and engineer Kenny Gioia, aims to provide both basic and advanced panning tips and techniques.

It can be downloaded, viewed online or streamed and contains 12 chapters, with a running time of 98 minutes. Everything is presented in Pro Tools 11, but the techniques are transferable to any DAW. Gioia begins with a simple intro before discussing pan laws and how brightness, transients and instruments are affected by panning.

There are three excellent chapters on panning FX, creating stereo from mono, and stereo FX. Topics include auto-panning plug-ins and Leslie-style speakers, doubling-up for thickness and width, and creating super-wide chorus, flange and slap-back delay sounds using mixer sends and ping-pong delays. The second half looks at a real-world mix, with Gioia working through the elements of a heavily layered pop track.

There are chapters on percussion, bass, keys and piano, guitars and vocals. Each of the tracks is gently processed via buss sends, balancing instruments. A final video looks at the L/C/R mixing, in which each channel is panned hard left, hard right or to the centre.

Although the mix itself has obviously been worked on, it’s fascinating to see how using panning can help separate instruments, and stereo thickening can gel parts together and help them sit in the mix, especially the vocal. It’s a well thought-out tutorial, and could help you get closer to mix nirvana.