24/06/2020 Orchestral Positioning: Panning |

Composer for games and media

DISCOGRAPHY

Orchestral Positioning: Panning

Intro
Having been a music director for a couple of open source game projects I’ve reviewed
many tracks made by people who are new to virtual orchestration. Two of the most
common issues I’ve heard is 1) people having little or no idea how to position
orchestral sections within a mix, and 2) people underestimating the importance of
reverb. For that reason I gured I should post some guidelines on how to approach
this aspect of working with a virtual orchestra. It’s not a de nitive how-to and it
doesn’t have step-by-step instructions. It should be considered a bunch of tips for
getting you on the right track. Nothing more, nothing less.

I will be taking some things for granted here. For example I will just assume that the
reader is familiar with basic concepts like send effects and EQ and what different
reverb parameters do. If you’re not clear on what something means, google it.
Comments like “what is a reverb?” or “what DAW should I use?” will be politely
ignored. If there is interest I might write up a beginner’s guide to reverb explaining all
the fundamentals, but my main concern right now is getting into the juicy details
and providing some tips for people who need ’em right now. In other words, this
should be considered intermediate stuff.

When reading this guide it’s good to keep in mind that I am not an audio engineer,
I’m just a musician with an interest in recording technologies. So don’t take anything
stated in here as universal truths because I’m not an authority on the subject. Most of
the stuff I talk about here is the result of my own experimentation and knowledge
gleaned from articles by other people.

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Also, always remember that if it sounds right, it is right. There’s more than one way to
skin a cat, as the old saying goes. Be open to new ideas and learn as much as you can
from others. But don’t let me or anyone else tell you how to mix your music. Have fun.
Be creative. Think outside the box, and learn by doing. Got that? Good. Let’s get
started.

Positioning basics
If you’re new to music recording it’s deceptively easy to think about a mix as simply
multiple sound sources playing back at the same time. Because that is, basically,
what it is. And make no mistake, a completely dry recording in mono can sound great
if mixed by someone who knows what s/he’s doing. But in most cases all mixes rely
on stereo positioning and various psychoacoustic effects to achieve a wider and
deeper sound, partly for minimizing the risk of running into frequency cancellation
and other issues, but mostly for the plain ol’ reason that it sounds better.

Our brains rely on direction and distance to pinpoint a sound source, and if a
recording lacks this information it doesn’t sound natural to us. That’s why you
shouldn’t think of a mix as a bunch of layered tracks. Instead, imagine that it is a
three-dimensional space. Your job is to position all instruments along the X and Z
axes of this space so that they are out of each other’s way while still sounding like a
whole. Your two main tools for achieving this is panning (left-to-right placement) and
reverb (front-to-back placement).

Compared to getting the reverb right, panning is quite straightforward. You move the
pan knob (or slider) left and the sound moves to the left, you move it right and the
sound moves right. If you leave it sitting in the middle the sound will remain
centered, equally loud in both speakers. Anyone should be able to grasp the basic
principle behind panning right away. When, why, and by what amounts you should
use panning is trickier though.

Panning and orchestral seating

When it comes to panning sections within an orchestra, less is more is an excellent
adage. Panning the 1st violins hard left and the basses hard right might sound
impressive at rst, but if you’re aiming for at least some amount of realism it’s not the
way to go. Especially if you’re using a generous amount of reverb (which I think you
should; more on this later). The laws of physics dictate that the farther away you are,
the less you hear of the direct sound, the more you hear of the reverberations, and
the closer together the left and right sound sources appear. So violins hard left and
basses hard right, both with a lot of reverb on them, doesn’t make any sense. This
sound information tells our brains that we are standing between the two sections,
and that they are spaced a huge distance apart. If you have ever seen an orchestra

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perform you will know that this is not normally how violins and basses — nor the
listener, for that matter — are positioned.

Which brings us to seating. Long story short, the players in an orchestra are seated
the way they are for a reason, and unless you know what you’re doing you should be
careful about tampering with this. The typical orchestral seating plan has evolved
over centuries and while it’s de nitely not set in stone, you can’t just position sections
willy-nilly and expect it to make sense to the listener. To achieve a good balance in
terms of volume, loud instruments like brass and percussion traditionally go in the
back, with woodwinds and strings in front of them. To avoid clashing, sections with
similar ranges/timbres are positioned opposite each other in the binaural eld. For
example, violins left, trumpets right; horns left, celli right.

Of course, positioning instrument families according to loudness is a completely

moot point in a virtual environment, when by moving a couple of faders we can make
a pp woodwind passage clearly audible over an accompaniment of ff brass. But even
if it’s ne to take liberties with realism, it’s important to remind ourselves that our
goal here is to make orchestral music and thus we need to respect at least some
basic rules or it won’t sound much like orchestral music anymore. Positioning
sections “correctly” will simply make your music sound more convincing, and that’s a
point you really can’t argue with.

Rough panning example

When I set up an orchestral template, I usually position everything something like
this:

1st violins – halfway left

2nd violins – less than halfway left, close to 1st but you should be able to tell them
apart
Violas – center or slightly right
Celli – less than halfway right
Basses – halfway right
Trumpets – one third right
Horns – one third left
Trombones/tuba – halfway right
Flutes/clarinets – slightly left
Oboes/bassoons – slightly right
Percussion – timpani and bass drum centered or to the left (so as not to clash
with celli/basses), anything else to taste

As you can see this is very vague. I can’t give you any exact numbers because it
depends on what samples you’re using. Some samples have a wide stereo image and

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need to be panned more aggressively to sit well with the rest of the orchestra.
Sometimes it might even be necessary to use your DAW’s stereo width control (or a
stereo imaging plugin) to make the section narrower. I sometimes do that with violas,
as they are normally centered in terms of seating and if the stereo image is too wide
it will sound like you have viola players all over the place.

Likewise, I usually “mono-fy” my woodwind sections. That is, I turn down their
individual stereo widths to zero because these sections are small, sit close to the
center of the orchestra and are not as loud as the brass nor as diffused as the strings.
To be clear, I’m not talking about mono as in centering the woodwinds. I always keep
utes and clarinets slightly left off center and oboes and bassoons slightly right. But I
do not want the individual sections to be in stereo, because at the listener distance
I’m aiming for you would not be able to hear (e.g.) section utes as separate
instruments with discrete positions anyway. YMMV of course.

Variations
Some composers like to have 2nd violins to the right and/or the basses centered, as
low frequencies are less directional than mids/highs and we are used to hearing
centered bass in popular music. Some sample libraries (or at least one: Miroslav) has
the horns on the right together with the rest of the brass.

If I were to alter something in the traditional seating, I would probably put trombones
and tuba to the left. That way you’d have high strings + mid/low brass to the left, and
high brass + mid/low strings to the right. It theoretically makes sense but like I said
there are usually good reasons for instruments sitting where they are, even if they are
not obvious to a hack like me. This is after all a genre of music that’s been around for
hundreds of years and has been explored and re ned by minds (and ears) much
greater than mine. So playing it safe and going by the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t x it”
rule is probably a good idea for most of us.

If you really want to try a more unorthodox seating plan, by all means give it a shot
but make sure to put some thought into the why’s of it, and that it would make sense
to do it in the real world.

If you have no idea what a typical seating plan might look like, google up some
reference images. It will be much easier to hear where all sections should be if you
have some visual guidelines to help you. By all means, draw your own seating plan
based on the reference material and then tack it to the wall somewhere close to your
screen so you can just shoot it a glance whenever you feel a bit lost. This also makes
your virtual orchestra feel a bit more tangiable.

Putting things in place

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What’s most important here is that you let your ears guide you, not your eyes. A DAW
will always give you very detailed visual feedback and this can sometimes be
misleading. If the panning readout says the 1st violins are at 50% left and the 2nd at
40%, yet they sound like they’re in the same spot — or even reversed — ignore the
readout and adjust the panning until it sounds right. Your DAW only reports what it’s
doing with a signal, it has no idea what one signal actually sounds like compared to
another. That’s up to you.

But, I hear you asking, how do I know what “right” sounds like? This is where
reference music comes into play. Dig out some movie soundtracks or classical
recordings that you like. Use a good pair of headphones, close your eyes, and try to
picture the concert hall and all the players in front of you. Pay special attention to
how the sections are positioned relative to one other, and their size. E.g. a section of
three utes will sound smaller than a 16 piece violin section, even though their
loudness are balanced.

You will quickly notice, if you didn’t already know, that orchestral recordings can
sound as radically different as pop/rock albums. Some are close and intimate-
sounding, to the point where you can pick out the rasp of the bows and key clicks
from solo brass and winds. Others are huge-sounding, distant, sort of blurry. Even if
you prefer the latter kind and want your music to sound that way, I recommend
digging into the “intimate” recordings. For example, I heartily recommend all the 70’s
and early 80’s John Williams scores (Jaws, Close Encounters, original Star Wars
Trilogy, rst two Indiana Jones movies). These are great for learning positioning as
they are pre-wall of sound Hollywood soundtracks that you normally hear today.

Application
Now, to apply what you have learned to your own orchestral project, write a short
musical passage using all instrument groups. It doesn’t have to be a brilliant
composition, you just want as much as possible playing so you can hear what
sections sound like in relation to each other. Experiment with panning until you get a
rich, natural-sounding sound eld with everything nicely distributed from left to
right. Some overlapping is desirable, especially in the strings, but make sure that
there is enough separation that you can hear that it’s different sections playing.

If your intention is creating a project template that will be used for several
compositions, you will likely be tweaking the panning as you go. It’s impossible to
cover all imaginable scenarios without actually creating an actual piece of music so
don’t feel that you’ve failed in your preparations if you nd that your positioning isn’t
as good as you initially thought. This is particularly true if you’re using samples from
two or more different libraries.

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Next: Orchestral Positioning: Reverb in theory

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17 Responses to Orchestral Positioning: Panning

Pingback: Positioning guide (pt i) | Mattias Westlund

Christopher Ruel says:

April 3, 2015 at 9:59 pm

This is very helpful! Thank you for posting. I have typically relied on my ear, but this helps a great deal when
composing for a full orchestra. I am working on a large “classical” piece now and I tweaked as you have suggested
and I immediately noticed a difference that was positive.

Reply

Pingback: Panning and Seating | curranorchestration

Jaser says:
April 25, 2016 at 5:43 pm

This was super helpful thanks for posting this

Reply

Alireza says:
May 6, 2016 at 1:24 pm

Thanks a lot , that was very helpful

Reply

Nick says:
June 25, 2016 at 7:43 am

Thanks for the panning info! Setting up an orchestral ‘template’, and I wanted to check some sources on whether
stuff should be hard-panned or slightly. I tested roughly to your settings (mono’d the small WW sections too) and
it’s awesome. Good stuff!

Reply

Alex says:
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September 30, 2016 at 7:57 am

thanks a lot!You v been very helpful!

Reply

Darren says:
October 3, 2016 at 4:38 pm

How much width would you give each instrument?

Where would you place a piano in the stereo eld?

Reply

Perry Bacon says:

December 19, 2017 at 2:50 am

Thanks, this is very helpful and it’s sounding better.

Reply

Barry Tone says:

March 14, 2018 at 8:07 pm

Thanks, very useful guidelines. What about piccolo?

Reply

Mattias says:
March 14, 2018 at 8:39 pm

The piccolo is a ute, and sits with the other utes, whether C- ute, alto or bass

Reply

Davor Marko Krnjak says:

March 27, 2018 at 5:06 pm

Thank you very much

Reply

Sharon says:
May 15, 2018 at 6:37 am

Thank you! This is so helpful!

Reply

Al Toesacks says:

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June 25, 2018 at 12:51 am

Tone deaf guy has another dumb question. What about saxophones? Would you adjust the reverb/pan settings of
a saxophone part sinilar to settings used for the ute/clarinet section or settings used for oboe/ bassoon section…
or adjust the settings to something else for sax. Thanks

Reply

Owen Smith says:

January 9, 2019 at 5:37 pm

This is very helpful Mattias! I am going to try it out as soon as I can on some of the recent songs that I have been
working on that sound a bit jumbled and hard to distinguish between the different instruments. I think your
advice will help a lot. Question for you: How would you apply panning to a strings ensemble patch if you were
using one? I have some tracks where I use ensemble patches (such as 8dio dynamic bowings) and I’m not sure if
they should be centered or left or right based on whether I am using them mostly for low or high notes. Any
advice would be appreciated. Thanks again!,

Reply

Truls says:
February 1, 2019 at 9:13 pm

Hello Mattias,
Thank you for the nice guide.
I just have some input that might be helpful for some. When it comes to panning it also depends a lot on the
samples being used. Most sample libraries, at least the once I have experience in using are already pre panned
and are supposed to be used that way(recorded in a speci c spot in a room). listen to all the instruments in
sample library and see if they are or not. If they are panned be very careful with panning because you are
essentially moving rooms and not just the instrument when panning this type of libraries.

Examples that come to mind : Cinebrass, Lass 2, spit re percussion. From my experience unless the sound is quite
dry without any room it can create a lot of problems if panned around.
after nishing a song try removing all the panning just to hear the difference. Depending on the libraries used this
might actually sound better.

If anyone has any opinion regarding this I would like to hear it.

Reply

Mattias says:
February 2, 2019 at 3:30 pm

You are quite right Truls, and the article is probably due for an update. It was written almost 10 years ago (it was
published elsewhere before I put it up here) and my experience was limited to the older non-panned libraries I
had at my disposal back then. Orchestral libraries with recorded positions have since then become the norm and I
agree that you can’t pan such samples without running into various issues.

Reply

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