History Main / GratuitousPanning

* Ted Templeman's main studio gimmick when producing VanHalen was panning the guitar to the left channel to simulate a "live" sound, which guitarist Eddie Van Halen resented.

* {{Black Sabbath}}:

Historically, the decline of the "guitar on the right, bass on the left" type of mixing came about as albums started being recorded on 16 or more tracks, which makes it easy to double-track every instrument. When your mix already has two or more guitars playing the exact same part for the "fatness" this provides, the natural tendency is to spread them out over the stereo field. LedZeppelin and BlackSabbath were some of the early bands to do this, although not all the time as the examples below show. Likewise, when you have enough tracks to give each individual drum its own separate stereo position, its highly unlikely you're going to mix the ''entire drum kit'' to one side unless you're [[{{Retraux}} deliberately trying to invoke the 1960s]].

* The original single version of The Germs' "Forming" has the vocals panned hard left and everything else hard right. To be fair, it was a two-track recording of a four piece band, so that was really the only kind of stereo separation that ''could'' be done.

* {{Helloween}} uses this briefly in "Kill It", alternately killswitching the left and right guitar tracks really quickly for about a second. It's pretty jarring if you've got headphones on.

* The [[BuffySpeak fadey outey ending thing]] DreamTheater has at the end of "Panic Attack" alternates between the left and right channel, which is a bit disorienting when you have headphones on.

* On the {{Coraline}} soundtrack, the back up vocals move back and forth between the channels. The song? [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Phs898rcY Exploration.]]

* For {{Stereolab}}'s album ''Margerine Eclipse'', every single instrument on every single song was confined entirely to either the left or right channel--as some folks call it, a "dual mono" mix rather than stereo. Muting one speaker or the other can vastly change how the songs sound.

*** But if that's true, then, "Norwegian Wood"..[[FlatWhat What?]]

* [[OFWGKTA Tyler the Creator]] uses this effect at the end of his songs "Yonkers" and "Tron Cat."
* On the {{Coraline}} soundtrack, the back up vocals move back and forth between the channels. The song? [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Phs898rcY Exploration.]]

* Most of all it's worth noting that TheBeatles stereo mixing was done by other people and the band wasn't present during these sessions. There's a reason they say that "you haven't heard Sgt. Pepper's if you haven't heard it in mono."

** The ''Magical Mystery Tour'' album has {{egregious}}, distracting abuse of this trope, putting almost everything on the left channel, brass on the right channel, and the vocals in the center. The not-so-distracting exceptions: "The Fool on the Hill", "Your Mother Should Know", "I Am the Walrus".

* In the breakdown at the end of [[PinkFloyd Pink Floyd's]] "Interstellar Overdrive", the whole thing pans back and forth pretty fast to sound like the music is spinning around the listener, though it's more likely to give you a headache.

* "Talk Talk" by Alice Cooper.

* Satirically used by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention throughout ''We're Only in It for the Money''.
* Winked at on Aimee Mann's ''The Forgotten Arm'', which tries its hardest to sound like a 1970s album.

* [[OFWGKTA Tyler the Creator]] uses this effect at the end of his songs "Yonkers" and "Tron Cat."

* You could use "Go Straight" from ''StreetsOfRage 2'' to test your speakers. The first few bars bounce from left to right every note.

--> Now I'm back in your left ear.

* In Joy Electric's spoken-word song "Hello Mannequin", the vocal track abruptly switches from the left channel to the right channel and back again with every single line.

* "Dan Dare" by the ArtOfNoise has an incredibly jarring panning effect partway in that almost spoils the music entirely.

* {{Machinae Supremacy}}'s "Hero" has two guitar solos playing at once, one for each channel. They're written so that one track is shredding while the other plays more slowly and melodically, switching every once in a while.

* "Astral Traveler" by {{Yes}}, {{Or So I Heard}}.

* The Temptations song "Slave" (from ''Puzzle People'') has been [[OrSoIHeard described by one reviewer as having "enough panning to make George Clinton dizzy"]].

* {{Helloween}} uses this briefly in "Kill It", alternately killswitching the left and right guitar tracks really quickly for about a second. It's pretty jarring if you've got headphones on.

* "Ectobiology" from the {{Homestuck}} Volume 5 album, when it was released, originally had a panning effect added that made the song swoop from left to right and back again, rhythmically with the music ''for the entire length of the song''. When [[BrownNote people listening through headphones complained of headaches]], the panning version was removed from the album and replaced with a much less gimmicky one.

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** The song "Lucifer Sam" from the same album also takes this trope UpToEleven in that, with each repetition of the riff, the guitar track moves to a different position in the stereo field. Meanwhile, the drums and the vocals are seperated as per usual with a song from TheSixties.