Many years ago I worked with the girlfriend of Steeler’s drummer, Mark Edwards. Just a little cocktail trivia. 
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That’s a strange name for a girl.
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How many people do you think aren’t going to understand you’re being facetious? I’d say quite a few considering all of the people that took my St. Anger mix seriously.
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What makes you think I care?
The sun will still rise tomorrow morning, I will still drink some beer, and Bryan Adams will still be number one in the charts.
OK maybe not the last one.
I’ll give you my take for what it’s worth…
I think people mistake “wide” with “big”. Wide drums totally disconnect your mix in MY opinion. Why people pan toms and cymbals so wide is just…well, to me, nauseating. Why such a strong word? Well, cymbals are accent “side men”. They aren’t “focal point” instruments to where they need such a place in the pan field to stick out.
Now that said, pans are crucial. But when you have cymbals and toms all over the place in your pan field and your guitars wide panned…it’s easy to create issues within the mix. Now, in MY personal experience, people go wide for three reasons…
- They are looking for “big” and mistake “wide” in place of it.
Explanation: Big is another animal. It has nothing to do with “wide”. Big means “sound size.” A big sound means it was recorded for size using the right mic captures in the right room. Let’s simulate for a second. Most drum programs may have say, a snare drum when panned center, that literally sounds like it may be reaching out from 20 left to 20 right in size. Mic up a snare the right way in a good room…you just doubled the size of the drum to where it may appear to sound like the sound itself stretches from 40 left to 40 right.
- They are mixing in headphones and just love the sound of everything wide.
Explanation: headphones are cool to mix in as well as listen through. However, because of how hard pans can win you over too easily (almost like using too much bass because we all love that low end rumble) headphones are not really a good way to properly pan a mix unless you really know how to perceive what they are really doing.
- They are using the LCR method and either don’t care of haven’t noticed the massive disconnection withing their drums.
Explanation: Quite a few like the LCR method and some do a really nice job with it. However, it’s not for everyone and if you aren’t careful, you can wreck a mix in seconds using this method. I personally don’t agree with it and haven’t ever heard anything that blew me away using this method. I prefer having instruments set up like a stage…the way you’d hear it live.
Imagine this for a second with wide panned drums. Think about how those toms or cymbals literally would sound like someone took them away from the kit on a stage and put them all the way in the corners. That would sound like ass…and I think it sounds like ass when people do it on a mix. That’s just me…there are no rules. Do what you think is best that compliments your mix. Be the one people follow…not the one that follows.
Narrow pans: Your always going to have an easier time with narrow drum pans. Why? Because the kit will remain connected at all times and guess what…if you do a mix that doesn’t exceed say 80% and listen back verses the mix you did with 100 L/R, one thing you will instantly notice…the narrow mix will not only sound tighter, it will have more impact.
I tend to set my instruments up like a stage as I mentioned. My drum pans on an entire kit usually do not exceed 50% or 60% in the pan field. I also try not to hard pan things other than special effects that I really want to stick out in places. When you do it that way, you also cut down on a little listener fatigue by keeping a tight mix without stuff always bouncing all over the place. And when a special comes out of nowhere…it sounds way cool because nothing else has occupied the hard pans in the mix.
I’m always for more narrow. Now, that doesn’t mean be so concerned you are almost mono. I’m saying, just keep things tight and don’t over-do it. That said, sometimes a more narrow mix may not be the answer for a particular song or genre. You have to mix for the song at all times and do what is best for the song in both consistency, and impact. The more things you have hard panned…the more you have stuff walking on top of each other. Let’s look at another issue…
Stereo effects: Every time you insert a stereo effect, that effect by default, is going to send hard left/hard right. Add in instruments occupying those spaces and a disconnected drum kit, and man you’re opening up a new can of worms here. I always use either imagers or stereo controllers like the Waves S-1 or the Sonitus Phase. This just allows me to control the L/R spread of the effects I’m using. Some have a pan built in. But plugs like those are great to control where I want my effects to reach out in the pan field. I eq them as well. This keeps everything tight and out of the way. We have 200 pan possibilities…make use of them I say but try not to literally disconnect your instruments. Sometimes (ok, for me most of the time) narrow is the better choice. 
But hey…whatever works.
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I’m also in the camp of wanting my mixes to resemble what a live band would sound like from 20th row center. I totally get that a studio mix has no limits and one can do whatever one damn pleases and don’t fault anyone for exploiting that to the max. But I don’t care much to listen to such material. Hey, I’m old, what can I say. 
So I mix for a sound that I like, and what I like is for it to “feel” like a live act. I don’t think any of the kit pieces in my drum tracks ever pan as wide as the 50-60 Danny mentioned; but then I’m strictly ITB using MIDI drums rather than micing a live kit.
In the case of real drums (i.e., overheads), it’s pointless discussing them in those terms anyway. Levels are more important than panning, so in order to balance up (typically) the hi hat with the ride, one ‘side’ may need to be higher than the other in level. This means that in order to get the required panning, the pan knobs could be literally anywhere, because they are not only panning, but also compensating for a variation in level between the two sides of the image.
For example I have just mixed a drum kit where the ride side of the kit had to be taken up in level to balance it with the hat side, which meant that visually, the ride’s side of the stereo image was pannned in the middle, but the hat’s side was full left (100%). The aural effect of course was completely different - a nicely balanced stereo image with all the drums and cymbals in their natural places.
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it just seems natural to post this here. Just ran across this today. Was wondering when someone would finally iso this great track
Denny Carmassi is the messiah. You gotta love his hair on the front cover of the Heart S/T.
Lame clame to… not fame?
yeah, id love to jam with Denny, great pocket
Perhaps. She talked about it a lot though, and this WAS during the time that Steeler had snagged Yngwie Malmsteen with an American visa or something (I think he had to have a sponsor or work permit) to record their album. So it was before the album had come out and before hardly anyone had heard of Yngwie, so in retrospect I had felt honored to have a glimpse of Rock history in the making. Apparently Ronnie James Dio and Phil Mogg (UFO) were lobbying heaving to get Yngwie in their bands, but he chose to go with Steeler (or their record company) instead.
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