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Why is Eddie so far to the left?


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Hey all,

 

I've been doing a lot of critical listening lately, which I define as sitting in my studio in front of my monitors (with eyes closed) and listening to various pieces of music. I devote my full attention to the experience, and over time I've found that my ability to pick up details increases (along with my stereo sensitivity), and I've learned a ton about pop/rock arrangements. I would recommend this to anybody seeking to improve their recording/mixing/mastering/production chops.

 

Recently I was listening to some classic Van Halen albums, and I noticed that Eddie's guitar is pretty far to the left. From Van Halen's debut album up through 1984, it's pretty consistent. There are tracks on Diver Down that have the guitar up the center ("Where Have All the Good Times Gone" and "Little Guitars"), and a few tracks on 1984 use a stereo delay or doubling ("Top Jimmy" comes to mind). But they are the minority. Classic tracks like "Unchained", "Panama", "I'm the One", etc. have the guitar panned pretty hard left, without much counterpoint on the right side. Doubling of the guitar seems rare on those early albums, so you don't often find a guitar sound on the right side.

 

I don't think this was done to ease cutting of the lacquer, as there were far hotter albums back then. I have to conclude that it was what Ted Templeman and Donn Landee wanted. Maybe it was to provide a stage-like experience to the listener. But now that I hear it, I can't "unhear" it, and the music seems shifted to the left quite a bit. There is seldom anything on the right that balances Eddie's parts.

 

Thoughts?

 

Todd

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That was done so that when VH stuff is played over the ceiling sound systems in grocery stores, the guitar only appears over there at the beer aisle.

 

Perfect answer.^ :)

 

There was a lot of talk about that in Templeman interviews over the years. He didn't want to do the typical think of faking a second guitarist with a double and pan. That would gloss over some of what makes Eddie so unique. So, after thinking on and trying some stuff, he decided to be bold and mix him lifelike, and take great care to get some sort of balance on the opposite side through delay and reverb spilling over. They do use doubles, but rarely that panned hard deal. This tune show the technique clearly. And I like how the solo is panned wide, totally bucking tradition for the style...

 

[video=youtube;bFTxQ2dTnQw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFTxQ2dTnQw

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There was a lot of talk about that in Templeman interviews over the years. He didn't want to do the typical think of faking a second guitarist with a double and pan. That would gloss over some of what makes Eddie so unique. So, after thinking on and trying some stuff, he decided to be bold and mix him lifelike, and take great care to get some sort of balance on the opposite side through delay and reverb spilling over. They do use doubles, but rarely that panned hard deal. This tune show the technique clearly. And I like how the solo is panned wide, totally bucking tradition for the style...

 

Very cool for you to be able to dredge that up and give an authoritative answer :thu:

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Hey all,


I've been doing a lot of critical listening lately, which I define as sitting in my studio in front of my monitors (with eyes closed) and listening to various pieces of music. I devote my full attention to the experience, and over time I've found that my ability to pick up details increases (along with my stereo sensitivity), and I've learned a ton about pop/rock arrangements. I would recommend this to anybody seeking to improve their recording/mixing/mastering/production chops.


Recently I was listening to some classic Van Halen albums, and I noticed that Eddie's guitar is pretty far to the left
. From Van Halen's debut album up through
1984
, it's pretty consistent. There are tracks on
Diver Down
that have the guitar up the center ("Where Have All the Good Times Gone" and "Little Guitars"), and a few tracks on
1984
use a stereo delay or doubling ("Top Jimmy" comes to mind). But they are the minority. Classic tracks like "Unchained", "Panama", "I'm the One", etc. have the guitar panned pretty hard left, without much counterpoint on the right side. Doubling of the guitar seems rare on those early albums, so you don't often find a guitar sound on the right side.


I don't think this was done to ease cutting of the lacquer, as there were far hotter albums back then.
I have to conclude that it was what Ted Templeman and Donn Landee wanted
. Maybe it was to provide a stage-like experience to the listener. But now that I hear it, I can't "unhear" it, and the music seems shifted to the left quite a bit. There is seldom anything on the right that balances Eddie's parts.


Thoughts?


Todd

 

I really enjoy mixes that put players in a spot and leave them there. A player of that magnitude deserves his own side of the radio so...:thu:

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I've noticed that the VH guitar was over to the left ever since I first heard them as a kid and absolutely love it that way. There were a lot of options by the time Van Halen was recording, so this was clearly an artistic choice on Templeman and Landee's part, not a limitation. I still love "VH I" and "VH II". Fantastic snotty punk energy, great riffs, great guitar, fun vocals, and this amazing leap-out-of-the-speakers quality.

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My guess would be that without stereo delay or doubling, there weren't a whole lot of options to create a stereo soundfield with a one-guitar, no keyboards band back in the analog days. They were probably just trying to do the most with what they had.

 

:freak:

 

We're talking about the late 70s. Stereo delay and doubling certainly did exist then. And a lot of other options too. It was obviously a deliberate choice to keep it stripped down like it was, and that's part of what made early VH stand out, at a time when nearly everyone else was going overboard with lush production.

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My guess would be that without stereo delay or doubling, there weren't a whole lot of options to create a stereo soundfield with a one-guitar, no keyboards band back in the analog days. They were probably just trying to do the most with what they had.

 

 

Home studios, including cassette 4-tracks, had the capability of panning as well as many other options back then, so you can be quite certain a professional recording studio had many options as well.

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Home studios, including cassette 4-tracks, had the capability of panning as well as many other options back then

 

Of course they had a pan button. :facepalm: Obviously. They used it. Isn't that the question here---WHY they decided to pan the guitar instead of leave it dead-center or add delay to make the guitar sound "stereo"?

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Obviously. My point was that if you don't WANT to put delay on the guitar or double-track it, how else are you going to create a stereo soundfield with a single guitar in 1978?

 

 

How else would you do it in 2012? There were plenty of options for creating a stereo soundfield in 1978 (starting with actually recording the guitar with a stereo mic configuration) and if they didn't exercise any of those options, I think it's obvious they meant for the guitar to sound exactly that way. And the interviews that Lee K. quoted seem to confirm this.

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How else would you do it in 2012? There were plenty of options for creating a stereo soundfield in 1978 (starting with actually recording the guitar with a stereo mic configuration) and if they didn't exercise any of those options, I think it's obvious they meant for the guitar to sound exactly that way. And the interviews that Lee K. quoted seem to confirm this.

 

 

Which doesn't challenge anything I said. I don't know why you're arguing with me. Obviously they wanted the guitar to sound that way. And obviously the way they wanted it to sound was as natural as possible. Anything available in 1978 to create a stereo soundfield with a single guitar would have detracted from that natural tone. Much more so than the more - subtle options available today. As pointed out by others, it was very common for two-guitar bands to hard-pan the guitarists. AC/DC did this. Templeman and Landee did it regularly with the Doobie Brothers. With a one-guitar band, the options become much-more limited.

 

Had they kept him dead center, the records would have sounded mono. Panning the guitar still gave the records a semblence of stereo while leaving the guitar in its most natural state. That's all I was saying.

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Well the answer to 'why' lies in understanding the technical and artistic aspects of panning. Technical reasons might include a certain spacial imaging they want for the VH signature sound, that artistically might just be 'that sounds cool'. I have some theories but that's all they would be.

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Had they kept him dead center, the records would have sounded mono. Panning the guitar still gave the records a semblence of stereo while leaving the guitar in its most natural state. That's all I was saying.

 

 

Right. It's just that when you wrote:

 

 

My guess would be that without stereo delay or doubling, there weren't a whole lot of options to create a stereo soundfield with a one-guitar, no keyboards band back in the analog days. They were probably just trying to do the most with what they had.

 

 

We interpreted that to mean that you felt there weren't a lot of options. And so all we're trying to say is that there was stereo delay, doubling, and many other psychoacoustic techniques in 1978, including comb filtering, panning one guitar to the other side and applying various effects (short delay, modulation effects, etc.), panning a delay or reverb to one side, and whatever else. But if you're talking about the decisions aesthetically, then sorry, I guess that wasn't clear.

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Right. It's just that when you wrote:




We interpreted that to mean that you felt there weren't a lot of options. And so all we're trying to say is that there was stereo delay, doubling, and many other psychoacoustic techniques in 1978, including comb filtering, panning one guitar to the other side and applying various effects (short delay, modulation effects, etc.), panning a delay or reverb to one side, and whatever else. But if you're talking about the decisions aesthetically, then sorry, I guess that wasn't clear.

 

 

Well, they did pan the reverb and delay to one side. But, yes, I think it was mostly an asthetic decision to keep the guitar as natural-sounding as possible without making it sound mono.

 

Also, Templeman and Landee were notorious "hard panners". Guitars were hard-panned often on those old Doobies recordings, and the hard-panned vocals on "Black Water" is one of the most famous hard-pans of all time.

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"While this says "slightly off-center", I have distinct memories of that guitar sound as panned hard (left, IIRC) to one side, with reverb to the other.

 

 

That's how they did it. But there's so MUCH reverb on the other side that the end result is somewhat closer to "slightly off-center". (Well, about 75/25 to my ear.)

 

Actually I question how much thought they put into it. "A reasonable idea" sounds about right. I'm sure there were some other options available but, at the risk of speaking sacrilege, Templeman and Landee weren't exactly the most aggressive or innovative production team during the 70s. Yes, they produced some major albums but frankly, I was never a big fan of the sound of most of them. I always thought the drum sounds on those old Doobies albums were very average-at-best (actually, most of the time the snare sounds like a cardboard box) and I don't think the drums or the bass on those early VH records are much better.

 

That's all personal opinion, of course, but even if you really LIKE their sound I don't think anyone can say they were pushing the boundaries with technology, micing techniques, production and the such. When you have great music to record, all you need to do is 'get it on tape', I suppose. But I think we sometimes have the tendency to look back on hugely successful albums as if some special magic and attention was taking place in the recording studio at the time when many times, these guys were just showing up for work and doing their jobs.

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