HiHat left or right?

BurningShrine

BurningShrine

New member
Hey!

A lot of you guys are mixing enineers and musicians.

How do you pan your Drumkit?

IMO the HiHat should be on the left side. (from a right handed drummers perspective)
Actually, I get pretty annoyed if it isn't... ;o)

How do you guys feel about that?
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

I am not a skilled mixer, but I like it slightly to the right. Most drummers I know have the hi hat on their left, so if I'm in the audience listening to the band the hi-hat should be to my right.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

Yeah, I like mixing things from an audience point of view, not the band's point of view.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

It's personal choice... YMMV.

I taught myself drums, so I play with the ride next to the hat. As I'm also left-handed, I play matched grip with an open stance, so I don't cross hands too often.

When I mix, I use my drummer's perspective:

L------------mid left-------center----mid right-----R
Hat & ride, high tom, snare & kick, low tom, floor tom & crash.

I center the snare and kick, because that's about 40-something years of my dad telling me, "if you mix snare and kick to either side, it drives the (vinyl) mastering engineer crazy."
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

Hi-hat left. **** the audience, they're 20 feet in front they can't hear panning from a kit. Hi-hat on the left just sounds correct after drumming for a while.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

I pan my drums as though they would sound from behind the kit as a right handed drummer. I believe that is considered the English way, and panning them as if you're hearing from the audience is considered the American way.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

JOLLY said:
I pan my drums as though they would sound from behind the kit as a right handed drummer. I believe that is considered the English way, and panning them as if you're hearing from the audience is considered the American way.
Click to expand...

Gimme summa that apple pie.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

It's a creative choice, not a rule. It depends on whether you want the kit to appear to be in front of the listener or from the drummers perspective (for people who like to air-drum :) ).
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

Thanks guys, I'll keep panning from the drummers perspective then.

I feel more comfortable when I'm able to "Air-Drum" (just like Beer$ mentioned)
and "play along" during a mixing session.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

I think that everyone who believes that panning the hi-hat backwards is how the audience hears it is wrong. The drum kit is in a fixed point when you're performing. There's what, like three feet from one end of the kit to the other? The audience is at least 10+ ft away. They won't hear left right panning at that distance, just the drums as a single point source. If you want to do the drums the way an audience would hear it, mix in mono.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

Steve is correct for the most part... if you're at a show, even with a multi-miked kit, front-of-house engineers will mix drums to mono.
The audience would lose perspective of left-right separation of an unmiked kit after about 10 yards out.

The old-school studio engineers didn't start mixing drums for stereo until the early to mid-70s. Even then, they didn't go crazy; they mixed mid-left to mid-right.

The vinyl mastering engineers wanted most of the low-frequency, high-impact sounds (drums and bass) in the center, as it made for an easier cut to disk.
Too much energy panned to one side, and the wall of the groove would break down, and the LP would skip.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

Unless your drummer has a Neil Peart-sized kit and is about to undertake an epic Prog Rock type solo, it matters very little.

Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who, Dylan, Motown, Hendrix, Miles, Coltrane, the Wrecking Crew, John Henry Bonham, whoever. Just about all of the classic recordings you can name, the drum kit is mono. Even Keith Moon! All sound epic.

In more modern times, a very narrow pan suffices. Add a bit of width with Early Reflections and subtle room Reverb treatments.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who, Dylan, Motown, etc etc etc all had mono to begin with, so there's that. Page mixed When The Levee Breaks down to mono. They also had 4 tracks to work with for "the golden years", so the sound that made them famous was already set in stone.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

My point was, those old recordings generally had the drum kit mixed in mono. Do you sense a lack of anything as a result of this?
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

I agree with the notion that hi-hat panning isn't a huge deal but I don't like it at all when instruments are panned from the drummer's perspective. It bugs me to see a band live and the guitarist is on the opposite side from where he's panned in the recording.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

aleclee said:
I agree with the notion that hi-hat panning isn't a huge deal but I don't like it at all when instruments are panned from the drummer's perspective. It bugs me to see a band live and the guitarist is on the opposite side from where he's panned in the recording.
Click to expand...

Not all the instruments have to be. Just the overhead/ambient drum tracks.
 
Re: HiHat left or right?

The only place where the kit sounds that positional is from the drum stool.

In the case of electronic music or a human triggering samples from pads, how do you pan that?

In some forms of dance music, it is perfectly normal for, say, a synthetic hi-hat to shift across the stereo field. There seems to be no obligation or expectation to immitate the positional layout of a conventional acoustic trap set.
 
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