Panning perspective

I used to do drummer perspective way back when, until I found out there was actually more than one way to do it!

I asked my drummer. He said "I want to feel as if I'm watching a band play, not as if I'm playing with a band", so I went audience perspective ever since.

Drummer

I was an "audience perspective" fanatic before becoming a "drummer perspective" fanatic so I settled somewhere in the middle (pun intended).

Both... Depends on the client. I have a singer/song writer that started life as a drummer, the mix is broke if I mix audience perspective!

I mix drums from drummer perspective. The only time I’ll deviate is if it’s for a video facing the drummer.

Audience perspective. People don't usually air drum to my kind of music anyway. Panning is LCR with very, vey few exceptions. Drums are usually mono in the middle, if not they're mono somewhere else, but not usually (I know I'm not the Beatles.) If I have more than one room mic, THOSE are panned hard left and right.

Always Audience.....

I just can’t imagine hearing a floor Tom on the left.

!?!?!?!?!

I tend to take that sort of information from the band leader. Not necessarily asking them outright, just asking them about their rehearsal setup and if they feel like they have really great rehearsals or if they feel the live thing is where they actually feel best.

If everyone faces the drummer during rehearsals and the drummer is cool with whatever (and/or isn't the primary creative in the band) then I'll go audience perspective. If the drummer is the primary creative, has a huge say in the production, or everyone looks away from the drummer during rehearsal I'll pan drummer perspective. I'll also take primary listenership into consideration. Are they a mathy or technical band? Yes = another point for drummer perspective. No = one more for audience perspective.

I default to audience unless I'm given compelling reason to go otherwise. Often, the artist having a semi-strong enough opinion that they bother to mention it is a compelling enough reason.

I work primarily in rock so I'm shooting for (sometimes achieving?) "big" sounds. Overheads get hard-panned. Toms are soft panned (50% maybe? I don't need 90hz of a floor tom blowing up only one side of my master bus compressor but I don't want it too feel too small), and I'm probably using a combination of mono and hard-panned stereo rooms.

What I find more fascinating than drum panning is how you pan the rest of the everything.

Often in rock genres there are doubled (left and right) rhythm guitars. What are you doing with the non-doubled stuff? Center? Soft-panned? I TRY to put contrasting stuff together and pan similar stuff away from each other as much as possible (when those things need to stand out - but when they need to blend I'll pan similar towards similar). Two instrument parts in a section playing non-identical stuff and you want them both to be heard and contribute? Which one's more rhythmic? Pan that away from the subdivision component of the drums (whichever has it at the time - hats, ride, etc.) and pan the thing with the longer notes towards the subdivisions. More contrast per side when you want to hear it. Maybe it's frequency response? Bright guitars away from the hihat and dark rhodes away from that floor tom that gets ridden later in the song? What about the single-tracked vocal harmony? Send it to a Haas delay and surround the lead vocal or leave it unbalanced? What's the emotional context at that moment of the song? Does it inform that harmony or is it just there because the vocalist wanted to pretty it up a bit?

Ugh!! Too many possibilities!!!! IT'S ALL GOING UP THE FUCKING MIDDLE!!!!!!!

Just listen 'til it sounds good, right?

I actually never thought about how I panned (drummer perspective) until a client asked me to do the opposite. I didn't really ever consider whose perspective....it just sounds right to me to have the hat on the left....but, he had apparently noticed that no matter whose material, I always panned that way, and it bugged him--kudos to him for bringing it up on the front side. I have no issue reversing them IF I know that going in. If someone ever sprung that on me as a revision request, my heart would sink, because it's not "as easy" as reversing them....it will throw the symmetry off in general....luckily, knock on wood--only time it's ever come up was in advance--that ONE time.