Hopefully this will help, it doesn't matter. smile

I say that because there is no correct way. I don't mean that as in a "music is art; break the rules." I mean it as there are no rules AT ALL. I hear HH's on the far left, just left of center, up the middle, off to the right, and even continuously randomly panned during a song.

Also, the ride doesn't have to be opposite of the hats. I hear it on the same side fairly often. Even more so since a fair number of drummers have a second set of hats.

For me personally, I prefer hats on the left and ride on the right because that's how it sounds when I play; which has been touched on. But the bigger factor is I like thinking I'm the one drumming. If it hear hats on the right; I'm watching someone else! So, I'm in the audience. For whatever reason, it takes me more out of the music. When I was younger, I would even go so far as to turn my cans around to hear it with the hats on the left if they were panned on the right.

As far as Phil Collins, how he set his kit up had very little bearing on the panning of his drums. I just never knew if it was him or the engineer that made the decision and if it was a song by song basis. His toms go left to right in some songs, the opposite in others, and even panned almost entirely up the middle. For a while he didn't use nearly as many cymbals as you would normally think to use in a song. More so shakers, and electric percussion.

One quick example of would be by Genesis's "That's All." The HH starts right in the beginning of the song, panned up the center. There is no cymbal crash until 1:39...a little different. When the toms come in, they are panned right up the center to right.

Then again THE drum fill from him, I've coined it THE drum Phil, from "In the Air Tonight" is high tom (L) to low tom (R).

You guitarists coming into the drumming world with all of your "rules" like "keys", and "chords." grin I get why it's confusing.

I mean there are some basics for mixing like (generally) you want the snare up the middle...but even that's broken. If you listen to a song like "Gimmie That Girl" by Joe Nichols you will hear an auxiliary snare (which is off to the side of the drummer usually tuned different than the main snare) panned to the side for many of the ghost notes of the verse. The main up the middle; but just because it's a snare it doesn't HAVE to go up the middle. In this case, I think it helps the listener hear it a bit more...which give the verse a nice groove.

If it makes you feel better, MANY of the drummers I talk to who aren't pro don't notice. Many of the pro drummers I know don't care. Pan away my friends.

I could go on and on but this is probably already more than you wanted to know about drum panning. smile

The much shorter answer is, your song sounds fine to me. Even at the time you indicated; I wouldn't have thought anything was odd, wrong or out of place. Good song by the way!


Last edited by HearToLearn; 03/05/20 06:47 AM.
Chad (Hope that makes it easier)

TEMPO TANTRUM: What a lead singer has when they can't stay in time.