I have a tambourine hard panned to the left. I sent it along with other instruments to a reverb on an Aux track. Now I can hear a slight bit of tambourine on the right. Is it possible to keep the reverb of the tambourine on the left only? Is that something I should even want to do? How about sending the reverb to the opposite side only? Can I only use the tambourine by itself on this reverb if that’s what I want to do?
I’m in Logic Pro X if that makes a difference.
Thanks for your help so far and in advance for answering this question.
Do you have a pan control on the track send to the reverb Aux? There are potentially 3 pan controls: the tambourine track pan, the track send (tambourine to reverb) pan if there is one, and the reverb Aux pan. I’d check all those first. If your reverb is stereo, maybe there’s some bleed between channels or it’s the type of reverb you are using?
To solve it, maybe dedicate that reverb or another [U]just[/U] to the tambourine as you suggested. And try a [U]mono[/U] reverb instead of stereo, and then place it wherever in the soundstage you want it. If you pan the reverb to the opposite side, that might sound weird as if it’s two different tambourines … but under the right circumstances it might just be interesting. It only takes a minute to give that a try and reject it if you don’t like it.
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Thanks for the simple clear explanation.
This is an awesome website.
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And about your other question (do you actually want to do this), there is no fixed rule but here are some basic guidelines you can use:
Tambourine panned to the left, tambourine reverb panned to the right:
will contribute to a wide stereo image, sound more modern and will draw more of the listener’s attention to this particular track
Tambourine panned to the left, tambourine reverb panned to the left
will contribute to a wide stereo image (provided that other elements of the mix offset this one on the other side), will add a vintage touch to the mix, but possibly sound unnatural
Tambourine panned to the left, tambourine reverb in stereo:
will blend more easily in the whole mix, sound natural and easy to balance
Experienced mixers feel free to amend/contribute, these are just my personal views on this.
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Great advice from both answers! Completely agree with @Lophophora that there will be times you want to divide the tambo and its reverb and other times you’ll want it on the same side, or in the middle.
And I’d echo Stan’s suggestion to have a reverb send just for the tambourine so that you can treat it entirely on its own. Then you’re free to do whatever you decide works best.
If the arrangement is spare rather than busy, having the verb opposite might be best (I do that all the time for acoustic guitar in spare arrangements, e.g.), whereas in a denser mix it might be best to do it one of the other ways.
Good luck!
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All of the advise above is great… and I love having a source on one side and the verb on the other.
But in your case, check that you are using a true stereo verb. If the verb is stereo, it “should” adhere to your pan settings. Some verbs do have width controls, so having a more “narrow” setting will let some of your pan settings wander or mush together.
Also… check that your send is “post fader/post pan”. If you send pre fader or mainly pre pan… The sound going TO the verb will be right up the middle unless you have the ability to pan the send itself.
Many ways to skin a cat, many ways to mess with your stereo image as well…
Have fun
rich
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Oh there is some really cool stuff you can do with single instruments like this. Great advice so far. Personally, for stuff like tambourines and other individual instruments, I love the dry on one side and panning the verb opposite. That’s my go to. However, I also like to send that panned verb to another very subtle stereo verb, or a delay or both. Adding some distortion or saturation with low pass eq to tame the highs in that verb chain or more psychedelic effects, flangers, chorus etc. keeping it very subtle, just barely peeking out in the background can give you some depth with ear candy. Fun Stuff. Experiment, there are literally no rules, just keep the level under control.
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Thanks for all the help and advice
A lot depends on the reverb you are using. Some reverbs will keep panned elements panned (dual mono), some will basically sum everything to mono before applying the reverb (this is common) and some will have “true stereo” algorithms, where it is essentially two separate stereo reverb algorithms taking place on your left and right channels and then mixing them together. It sounds like the reverb you are using takes the second approach.
If you want to keep it separate and your reverb is monoizing it first, the easiest solution is to just duplicate the reverb and pan it where you want, like was suggested above.
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Thanks for that. Sounds like a simple simple solution.