Balance (HAT MIDI KIT) MiDi
Vanina Mazzillo
I'm hoping someone can help me. I'm using Logic pro X and have noticed recently that some of the midi instruments such as organ and the logic drummer don't seem to be perfectly central even when I have them panned right down the centre. This is particularly evident when I open up a stereo piano or organ. It always seems to be slightly louder on the right hand side.
I should point out, with the organ, there definitely is a slight imbalance as the level metre is higher on the right hand side on both the organs track and the master stereo output channel. However, with the snare, the level metre for the snare track itself and the master stereo output is perfectly balanced. But when I listen, particularly in earphone headphones, it seems louder coming out of the right one vs the left. This is more noticeable if I listen one earphone at a time.
Just because the instrument, say the drum kit, is placed centrally in the channel strip, doesn't mean all the instruments are also panned in the centre, which would give a mono drum kit and wouldn't sound great. Likely the drum kits are panned a little bit in drummer or facing-drummer perspective, so the kick will be in the center, the snare a little off centre, the hihat over to one side, the toms panning around the kit. This is normal and nothing to worry about, and if you want to pan the drums yourself, you can use a multi-output producer kit and pan whatever kit pieces however you want.
I haven't checked, but it's common and generally nice-sounding to slightly stereo spread keyboard instruments, like pianos and organs, with the lower notes being a little to the left, and the higher notes being a little to the right. If you're only playing higher notes up top, it's natural they might sound like that. All these thing can be easily changed if you don't like the standard, very normal, convention - just bring in the width of the pan knobs to make everything more mono.
Swap the headphones around on your ears - your hearing might be different between your two ears, so even hearing centrally stuff on headphones might appear unbalanced to you. Also, it's common for people to be a bit biased anyway when mixing and place more instruments left or right - you'll notice this more if you flip headphones around or swap L/R signals - it it sounds really unbalanced when swapped, but ok otherwise that's a good indication that your hearing or perception is causing this.
Thanks so much for your reply and I think you are right about the organ/ piano. The lower notes seem to be on the other side. However, with logics drummer I still seem to be hearing it slightly to the right. I am using a producer kit which allows for multi output and I have made sure the snares are panned central as is the reverb bus I send it to and the overheads and room channels are also central. But I swear I am still hearing the snare slightly to the right.
I have swapped the earphones around as you suggested and it then sound louder on the left. Also, I have checked mixes of pro tracks on spotify which I would assume have a central snare (trap, dance) and they all sound perfectly central.
If you could have a listen to those links I sent and see what you think? I might be going mad here but I swear I hear it louder in the right. Sometimes it sound like just decay or something that is louder in the right.
Hi Guys - thanks again. I've actually figured what is going on. Both the "room A" drum track and the "leak" are louder coming out the right had side despite both being panned central. I have checked this with the goniometer. This also means the whole kit channel is also louder on the right.
I have included images so you can see - as you can see, the snare on it's own is perfectly central and it sounds that way when I listen to it on it's own, however, as soon as I introduce the other channels, it sounds louder on the right hand side. As i mentioned previously is sound more like the decay and reverb is louder rather than the initial hit of th snare which would correlate with the room/ leak being louder.
And as I said, you can always reduce the width of the stereo balancers to bring things in a little if this is really bugging you and you can't find what's going on. You don't need to go all the way to mono.
By turning channels on/off, following the routings, observing the levels, using meters to see where the level difference is happening - basic audio signal troubleshooting. It's not happening on your snares as you uploaded files that were perfectly central, so it's happening somewhere else in your mixer.
If you're not sure how to investigate, can you create a test version of this project, with everything stripped out except the drum track and whatever routing you have set up, zip up and upload the project somewhere (no audio), paste in the link here and we'll take a look to see what's going on.
It would be great if you could investigate - so I just send you a zipped version of the project via a we transfer link - will that work? Stripping out all audio and leaving the drums tracks and routing etc?
Hey! i'm having a similar issue with parts of the kit being balanced from the drummers pov. I'm using the "Bluebird" kit. is there a way to balance the individual pieces? (I'm using MacBook so not all features are available)
Yep, adjust the individual aux channels in the Mixer window if inserted as a multi output kit....or open the Drum Kit Designer plug-in window (Edit pane) and set levels etc.
On the latter, I'm assuming "balance" means set levels.
If "balance" means pan position, the Mixer/aux channels.
Macbook isn't feature limited, so not sure what you mean?
Yep, adjust the individual aux channels in the Mixer window if inserted as a multi output kit....or open the Drum Kit Designer plug-in window (Edit pane) and set levels etc.
On the latter, I'm assuming "balance" means set levels.
If "balance" means pan position, the Mixer/aux channels
You can do everything on the MacBook that you can do on any other Mac. The keyboard shortcuts may not be the same though. You can choose Edit > Separate MIDI Events > Separate by Note Pitch, and if you hold down the Control key while you choose that menu entry, it will select that function in the Key Commands window so that you can assign it to Option+E if you wish.
Panning individual pieces is most easily achieved as follows:
Click the Instrument slot on the channel strip and choose Drum Kit Designer>multi output.
Press X to open the Mixer.
At the lower right of the fader for the Drum Kit Designer channel, you'll see a PLUS button.
Click it multiple times to create aux channels for each kit piece (kick, snare, toms, hats/perc).
Adjust faders, pots, use FX etc. as desired for each kit piece.
It will give you more options if the kit is more complex.
There will be some kits that group particular classes of kit pieces together - as with the hats/perc.
This is variable, depending on the plug-in used for "kit" playback. Logic instruments capable of playing kits are Drum Kit Designer, Sampler, and Ultrabeat. Drum Machine Designer is not a traditional "instrument" plug-in per-se, but rather a "track stack".
To simplify the concept, it's a "folder instrument" that contains a number of sub-tracks - each assigned to an individual kit piece. When you open the folder in the Main window, it cascades out, with each sub track shown. Corresponding channels for each sub-track are shown in the Mixer.
If you want to take it further, you have a couple of options:
- insert an additional instance of the kit on another instrument channel strip....use the main one for hats and the second instance to adjust perc, for example.
- import/create kits - or individual perc sounds - in QuickSampler, Sampler or Ultrabeat....or use Drum Machine Designer on a Drummer track
There are multiple ways to skin the proverbial cat and there aren't many limitations when it comes to sample manipulation/handling/mix routing - you just need to think outside the box occasionally.
The downside of this flexibility is that some methods/approaches can be more time-consuming to set up...but the end result justifies the means.
If it was for an individual perc piece or two, I'd be inclined to drag the sample into one or more QuickSampler instances or just synthesize it with Drum Synth (if an electronic type of sound), but YMMV.
Go with what works for you.
I quite like the Toontrack plug-ins. I use EZDrummer on my MacBook, and Superior Drummer in the studio (fundamentally due to library size - around 25 vs 600 GB).
They sound good and have ready to wear patterns (kinda like Drummer in Logic), which makes tracks faster to create and gets around my terrible finger drumming ?
I also have NI Komplete Ultimate, which has a lot of good acoustic drums.
Don't overlook Drummer/Logic's kits...they're actually quite versatile for a lot of styles, but won't be the right fit for everything.