Clearly, not crap for air drumming capabilities alone.

It's funny that the greatest air drumming moment ever: the drum break in "In the Air Tonight" is panned audience-perspective, but with a lefty drummer, so it's perfect for righties to imagine they're behind the kit.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 11:55 am lefty drummer

Yes.

Panning drums from audience’s perspective or drummer’s perspective: NC

Audience’s vs. drummer’s perspective: indifferent

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 11:55 am It's funny that the greatest air drumming moment ever: the drum break in "In the Air Tonight" is panned audience-perspective, but with a lefty drummer, so it's perfect for righties to imagine they're behind the kit.

HA!

As I mentioned in the other thread, my prior band was recording and the engineer had everything set up typical audience perspective. Our (lefty) drummer told him this was wrong. Engineer tells him audience preferred over drummer perspective. Drummer reminded him he sets up lefty, so he's actually in drummer perspective right now. Engineer just sorta takes it all in, and switches the panning of everything, which was particularly noticeable since he used two rack toms and two floor toms and a lot of beats and fills were based on playing lots of tom hits.

As a listener and/or bassist, I do not care either way.

There's no "correct" choice here, only preference. What kind of listening experience are you trying to create?

If you want the most natural experience for your audience, then mono or nearly-mono would make the most sense considering where people are positioned in the live listening environment.

If you are trying to make a record that has a little more interesting experience, then yeah go nuts as we often do even though it's unlikely too many folks are actually going to notice.

I generally feel like I'm making music for others to listen to so I think I usually pan to audience perspective albeit wider than you would normally hear as an listener at a live event. I say this as a drummer. The idea of "throwing a bone to the drummer" by panning from drummer's perspective is rather demeaning if I'm being perfectly honest.

I know this is C/NC but completely ambivalent about it. If I had hard feelings about the practice, they'd be "I don't care and neither does 99% of a listening audience so do what you like" Who in this thread is honestly making records that are going to be listened to by ANYONE more often than themselves and the engineers working on the album anyway? Make the record you want.

The snarky other choice is to pan drums entirely left or right. Which I personally wouldn’t dare do, but it’s a bold move.

Garth wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 1:19 pm Who in this thread is honestly making records that are going to be listened to by ANYONE more often than themselves and the engineers working on the album anyway? Make the record you want.

This is often literally the case these days (and who pays for it as well), so if it makes more sense to the drummer to hear the hi hats on the left then who cares what some dick streaming for 30 seconds on Spotify thinks.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 1:30 pm The snarky other choice is to pan drums entirely left or right. Which I personally wouldn’t dare do, but it’s a bold move.

lol - those early stereo experiments in the 50s (or 60s?) did this with often weirdly hilarious results. I think some of the early Devo stuff did this too. You learn pretty quick that the CD-tape-deck-adapter in the 30 year old dodgy band-van has a short in it that way

For what it's worth, I'm never listening to my own records after they're completed/mastered/past the test pressing stage. It's not that I don't like them, but it's that I don't need to hear them ever again (I'm making the damn record, jeeeeez, I've heard it enough.)

That said...when I'm making that record, I want it to sound like it sounds as I'm playing it. That's why we spend so much time tuning, thinking about mic choice/placement/etc. It probably matters most to me, but I don't think of it as anyone "throwing a bone to the drummer" - it's what I want to hear, so that's what makes the record.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 1:30 pm The snarky other choice is to pan drums entirely left or right. Which I personally wouldn’t dare do, but it’s a bold move.

I think this is the move for when you have two drummers (The Fall 1982-1984, for example.) Karl Burns gets one channel, Paul Hanley gets the other. Simple enough.

Garth wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 1:36 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 1:30 pm The snarky other choice is to pan drums entirely left or right. Which I personally wouldn’t dare do, but it’s a bold move.

lol - those early stereo experiments in the 50s (or 60s?) did this with often weirdly hilarious results. I think some of the early Devo stuff did this too. You learn pretty quick that the CD-tape-deck-adapter in the 30 year old dodgy band-van has a short in it that way

It's funny being in a gym or whatever and only hearing half the band/song basically. Extra funny if it's Blitzkrieg Bop and you get the Dee Dee side.