spreading hi hats and shakers?

[bustadoug]

Try this bro - have the hats/shakers all grouped together and duplicate it so you have 2 groups now pan 1 hard left the other hard right, have one group 1 or 2 ms delayed, see what that sounds like

works well on vocals or samples too- manual spread

This is interesting guys. Normally hard panning left/right is considered a bit of a no no, but this sounds wicked.

Are you hard panning the vocal example as well busta?

yea i have used hard pan on vocs for hip hop- was recommended by another producer to fatten up/ spread vocs-sounded cool on scratch parts too and im pretty sure ive heard this done even on snares on some older hiphop- hard pan but shift them just enough for the effect but not enough that you can tell theyre off, maybe bring the right back a hair and the left up. never tried with hats but you can probly add some pretty cool shuffle with them

[SunkLo]

Pitch shifting and eqing both sides differently will help keep them from being cancelled as well. Also with stereo delays, you can translate delay time into wavelength to figure out which frequencies will have nulls. Alter the delay time to fit the material's frequency content so that any phase cancelling that occurs isn't detrimental the the fundamental sound. Usually with percussion you'd probably want to go with the longest delay setting possible without it being noticeably slurred in mono.

[Wikum]

i haven't read through this thread so i'm sorry if i repeat something that's been brought up already. but this is how i do my beats sometimes:

keep kick and one snare mono.

then i'll add a second snare that has a longer release and more stereo feel.

3 hats closed and 1 open hat all hitting on different parts of the loop. 1 of the closed hats is kept mono, along with the open hat. then the other 2 hats are panned left and right.

then i'll add 3 breaks. but i cut out the kicks and snares in the breaks (just keeping the shuffle). then i'll put a stereo effect on 2 of the breaks (similar to sample delay) and keep one of them centre. always remember to low cut your layered breaks.

[yamaz]

Now you have the hat on 2 groups - 1 panned hard left the other panned right. 1 of those is delayed by a few ms.
If you check it in mono - hey presto it sounds like shit.
Turn off the outputs of both channels and then send them to two busses. Name 1 bus MID and the other SIDE. Send both the left and right group the original amount of signal.
Now i use BX control for this but voxengo have a free m/s plug called msed that does the exact same thing.
On the MID bus solo the mid portion which will effectively make it mono.
On the SIDE bus solo the side bands which will keep the stereo spread without losing mono compatibility when both are layered together.
Check for yourself by sticking a mono utility on the master channel afterwards.
Try this on all those pad/background sounds that thin out like a bitch when you put a mono utility on the master channel and you might be pleasantly surprised. Remember it is a trade off so it wont sound quite as wide as before but then again wont be out of phase either.

I got lost on this part. So are you basically saying, bus pan a hi hats and pan b hi hats to two channels, keep one mono and the other one stereo and layer on top of eachother? Wouldn't that cause phase problems by itself? I know this happens in reason when you have the redrum machine playing on top of whatever is in the sequencer.

[green plan]

Correct me if I'm wrong chewie or someone knowledgeable, but I thought you didn't get phase because they were in different parts of the stereo spectrum?

[staticcast]

IMHO....

Widening techniques on percussion are a Bad Plan. If you want a stereo hihat sound, use a stereo sample. Panning individual samples is fine, and you won't get any phase cancellation because panning is just a volume adjustment in the left and right, but for dancefloor stuff you'd generally want the vast majority of stuff dead centre and 100% mono anyway unless you're specifically going for a particular sound (eg a lot of old acid records having the closed hat panned hard left and open hat panned hard right, etc).

Stereo is great for a sense of space - bursts of stereo delay, stereo reverb, the occasional sweeping pad etc - but you have to be really careful to avoid the "woahhhh where the fuck did that come from" syndrome that you get when you're listening to a shitty rock band demo and all of a sudden the chorus comes in and the guitars have jumped out to either side because some overzealous engineer thought it'd thicken the mix. A well-constructed mono mix, IMHO, actually packs a lot more dancefloor punch than one where things are placed all over the stereo field. It's a bit like the sine-sub-vs-sine-with-harmonics analogy - SunkLo's thing with the single nail vs bed of nails. Some stereo content is great, but it's important to be able to tell WHAT is stereo, and what remains dead centre for maximum impact.

(To be fair, I don't listen to any really aggro dubstep or wobble stuff, so maybe those guys do it differently; I'm coming from a techno standpoint mostly...)

Pitch shifting and eqing both sides differently will help keep them from being cancelled as well. Also with stereo delays, you can translate delay time into wavelength to figure out which frequencies will have nulls. Alter the delay time to fit the material's frequency content so that any phase cancelling that occurs isn't detrimental the the fundamental sound. Usually with percussion you'd probably want to go with the longest delay setting possible without it being noticeably slurred in mono.

Again IMHO, but I think this is going a little overboard... if you really want a stereo sample, just use a stereo sample to begin with. If you don't have a stereo sample, make one (paste together two different sounds panned left and right, or resample a reverbed version of the sample, or whatever).

EDIT: the main thing I specifically dislike about the "delay one side to make it stereo" technique is that it invariably introduces the feeling that one ear is lagging behind the other. Psychoacoustically you're achieving pan in a different way, with phase delay instead of relative volume. It's difficult to use this technique to make something sound stereo without making it sound like it's coming from one side -- which side depends on which side is delayed and by how much.

[chewie]

Yeah i'm talking about mid/side processing (in a very basic sense) This is an intro guide to what i'm on about:
http://www.bluecataudio.com/Tutorials/T ... rocessing/
and here's a nice tut:
http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mix ... mastering/

You might be able to do this in reason using a mono /stereo mastering combinator - there's one floating around on the net somewhere.

Anyway from having a butchers on the net it sounds like the delaying left and right thing is a big no no (1ms isn't a big deal more like 10ms +) and it's better to stick to proper stereo tools and m/s processing. No expert hee btw i'm waiting for Macc to come in and tell me this is all bs.

[yamaz]

This m/s and mastering stuff seems a bit over my head. So what I typically do is pan all my drums like a real drum kit, so typically will pan two hi hats on the same side or sometimes opposite....I usually never go down past 2 o'clock or 9 o'clock... is this wrong to do or will it cause problems then? I often like to pan a sample to one side and delay it to the opposite side. is this bad too?

[Wikum]

i know this is now going off the topic of hats and more into general mix discussion. but i don't see the problem with panning, or using something similar to a waves s1 on a drum break layer that sits under the main non panned kick and snare. just remember to take all the very low end out. or better still, cut the kick and snare out of the break altogether, leaving you with just the shuffle.

[skimpi]

i dont do any spreading, as in like thickening up, but i dont see the harm in slightly panning everything, well not everything, but percussion and hats.
not hard panning though, if hard panning is like all the way, i normally do it like no more than 20 in logic, so then on headphones or a stereo system it will sound ok, but on a mono system it should make much of a difference. when summed to mono does it add the left and right sides? so if something is slightly panned left, its louder than side, but then when mono does it sound as loud or slightly quieter?

also with proper m/s recording, one mic is facing forward, and the other two the side, so then when you copy the one facing the side, and phase invert it, and pan them both hard right and left you have that, and the recording facing forward down the middle, so that gives a stereo image, and quite a wide sound, but when summed to mono, the two hard left and right ones should phase cancel, but the one down the middle is a different audio recording, because it was facing forward so shouldnt phase cancel.

with the example given on here before about sending to busses and panning and stuff, how come this doesnt phase cancel because they are all the exact same audio right?

[apastrat]

I dont get people who say that copy your hihat, delay one and pan them, i mean how hard is it to find a matching hihat for the one that you already? (which makes your hihats sound true stereo)

[dav.id]

wow I'm gonna read this tomorrow, I'm a bit tipsy right now....this is getting a great thread:)

maybe for in the production bible?

[deadly_habit]

program some drumfunk or choppage from a break and i think you'll get how to do that human feel
also note hot the breaks you audition are panned back when

for some examples
skip to 7:44 for a good example

[cahrlibrown]

Shaker peg shelves are of particular importance to the decoration style stirrer. Used for hanging chairs, flower pots and pans, kitchen utensils, coats and hats, or any way things can be used in whole House exactly as it was by the shakers in earlier periods.

[erratech]

mdaStereo use the haas effect and sums almost perfectly, worth a play.

[Manic Harmonic]

I only use the sample delay thing on long pads. it might sound like a horrible thing to accidentally cause phase cancellation on, but if the pad has enough movement, you can just do a long sample delay, and you don't really get that significant lagging effect you would with a short one shot like a hihat or a snare. I always check it in mono when im done spreading it. stereo spreader in logic sucks. it always makes it sound like its coming from one side no matter what. useless effect.

for hihats, i either use the flux stereo tool, which has a visualilzer thing and a meter that let's you see the phase, or i put a 50% wet ensemble or something on them and then use voxengo to turn down the center channel. sometimes it sounds like shit though. i also will alternate the hats left and right.

chewie thanks so much for that tip man, im gonna have to try that.