Not sure how "60s/70s" it is, but I use fairly hard pans on my music (60% to one side for instance) and a friend who was a recording engineer for a few decades told me to add some light and subtle reverb (it doesn't need a lot) to those panned parts and place the verb opposite the pan. I think it works pretty good, but I'm certainly no expert. Might work for going fully to one side or the other?

Send the panned track to a reverb aux panned to the opposite side, then attenuate the verb aux until it’s barely audible. Could help filling out the stereo field while retaining that old school hard pan

LCR mixing is awesome and was pretty common even through the 80's. That's where you pan tracks hard left/right, or dead center. No "kinda sorta to one side" mixing.

Two things: panning bassy sounds can sound too off-kilter, especially with headphones. You can either not hard pan these sounds or you use mid-side to keep the low content centered and just pan the freq's above that.

Other hard panned sounds work well when there is a sort of counterpoint in the other channel. A similar, but different sound with the same vibe. "Girl's Just Want to Have Fun" is a famous example of an LCR mix. There's an old "Classic Tracks" article about that one. The organ is comping in the right channel and the rhythm guitar in the left. If one of those was missing, the whole thing would sound unbalanced.

Frankly, a lot of that old stuff did sound disjointed. Like when the entire drum set is on one side and the bass on the other, whether it was The Beatles or Jazz of that time.

edit: I didn't mean M/S: I meant going multi-band.

I'm a big fan of LCR mixing. Specifically I like LCR+50/50 (meaning if you absolutely must, use 50% left and 50% right. The point is to have clear panning positions that hold up when played through speakers in a room.)

These are all generalizations, not absolutes, but with that in mind:

Often the problem is the side information is too loud. If you build up a really strong center, you actually don't need that many elements panned hard left or right to create a wide sounding mix.

Here's a really good video on the subject by Gregory Scott/UBK from Kush Audio. Search for this:

"PRO TIP: Wider Mixes need LESS Width" (YouTube)

If the center channel is loudest, the listener will always know where to focus, and the panned instruments will support and add a sense of space.

But when the sides get too loud, suddenly it's like your eyes trying to look in two direction as once.

Everyone knows to be careful with low frequencies in the sides - but high frequencies can be just as distracting. Especially if they have intense transients. Keep your strong transients centered and soften transients on the sides, if necessary, to reduce distraction.

You can also set up a mono room reverb panned left, and a mono room reverb panned right -- and send the opposite side channels to each... Add just enough to make it tolerable.

A similar but different alternative is to use a normal stereo reverb, but flip the channels before going in. Assuming it's a true stereo reverb, the majority of the sound will still come from the opposite side, but you'll get a little on the other. This is sometimes more natural than the above technique.

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Another technique is to switch between listening in stereo, mono, left-only and right-only when mixing.

The mono, left-only, and right-only is a trick often used by people with serious hearing damage in one ear... But it's another way to check your LCR mix as well. If your mix sounds good in L-only, Stereo, and R-only, then it should sound good all together.

An extreme example is most of Stereolab's "Margerine Eclipse" album. It has ridiculously extreme panning... Supposedly they made two separate mono mixes and then assembled them into a stereo mix. That may just be PR, although it would explain why there's no 'strong center' at all.

I mention it, though, because you're worried about a track sounding disjointed -- that album was very successful, so you can use it as an example of extreme panning. If you follow the above advice, you'll certainly be less "disjointed" than that one!

Also remember -- in LCR or in general, stereo reverbs can help give a sense of space and width... But sometimes MONO reverbs work best... And that includes for Center, left, right, flipped-left and flipped-right. Mono reverb is underrated.

In fact, sometimes a mono reverb going into a much-quieter stereo reverb is a good option... And when you use delays, consider feeding them into a reverb as well.

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And for my last trick... Assuming you're working in a genre that can handle it... Flip your mix L/R halfway through the song! It's an interesting move because whatever the ear was getting tired of now goes to the other side of the brain.

You can do it during a transition, and even have a single instrument 'travel' from left to right before the pan, as a sort of lead-in to the flip.

Have fun, LCR is a blast.

60's: Early mixing desk didn't have pan pots, they had switches that were for Left, Center or Right. Examples of this are Beatles mid-period albums or the Doors Debut album. Try Rhythm section on the left vocals on the right and guitars/keys in the center

70's: More tracks +pan pots. You'll hear stuff panned LCR but with a little bit in the stereo field in between the extremes. Start with everything panned hard LCR then figure out what sounds nice panned part way. (Hint: backing vocals and verse guitars)

The hard panning sounds like absolute ass, you can still get a 60s/70s sounding mix without any of the hard panning.

To me it was the Beatles who really nailed that style and in front of studio monitors I can barely tolerate it.

If you want to nail that era of sound consider this.

There were no algorithmic reverbs yet , springs, chambers, emt 140 emulations are needed now

Reverb/delay were committed early to tape, they were printed early and not mix decisions

Drums were considered one instrument, like 1-4 mics MAX. Not the dissected madness we have td.

Am radio jukeboxes and tvs were mono, the meat and potatoes of the mixes lived in that 200-4khz area because the fundamentals needed to be TIGHT.

Vocals usually were more dry sitting on “the bed” of the mix not in it like td’s sound

There is so much you can do to get something to sound like a record from that era outside of hard panning that zi hope you guys consider exploring

If you pan something like the drums hard to one channel you need something to compliment it in the other. “Paint It Black” is a good example. The drums and rhythm guitar are on opposite channels and mesh quite well.

I only use LCR mixing. I got into it from deconstructing what Nigel Godrich does on Radiohead albums - so it’s still in use

Yeah, I love LCR mixes when done well.

I think you can achieve the best out of this technique by planning for it from the start, and embedding it into your arrangements.

I’ll give you some examples. Putting a rhythm guitar part on one side? Maybe put some other part with a significant harmonic/chordal function on the other side.

With drums - if there’s just one main kit, it’ll probably sound best if it’s in the middle (same with bass). But, two different drum kits or percussion can sound great panned hard left and right. The first song on Stereolab’s ‘Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night’ album is a good example of this, from memory.

Basically, I think it helps to think about your arrangements, and balance key parts up with something complimentary on the other side. If you experiment with your hard panning while tracking (sort of mixing as you go I suppose), it can help with this.

EDIT: there’s a really good Sound On Sound article about LCR mixing from a few years back. I definitely recommend reading it. Here it is.

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/lcr-panning-pros-and-cons

Put the sound in one channel, then put its reverb in the opposite channel.

I dont want pretend to be a smartass but putting myself first , I know that silly mistakes happen. Can it be that the reference tracks from 60s/70s you are listening are remastered/"enhanced" versions and not the original versions and maybe thats the reason yours sound so off?

I make late 50s/early 60s style RVG-inspired cool cool jazz, with their recording and mixing aesthetics in mind. But I have never been able to figure out the panning you're talking about either. It just sounds so wrong when I try it. I think it must be something to do with reverb/room sound, etc., but I am still working on it. Just know you're not alone.

The trick is to mix the bass and drums LOUD so their at their ideal volume when summed to mono.

This is what George Martin did on While My Guitar Gently Weeps and a few other White Album tracks and those mixes sound just as punchy and powerful as their mono equivalents whereas the ones that don't sound weak and lacking.

There's a mixing technique where everything is panned hard right/left or center. Nothing in between. Huge spread.

If you are talking about the weird stereo shit they did in the early days of stereo sound, like hard panning all the drums and bass to one side, don't do that.

That 60s/70s sound is not easy to achieve using modern production techniques. It's a whole thing that people spend years trying to achieve.

What I can tell you for sure is that it's not about panning. In fact especially in the early days, it was about not panning and simply keeping everything in mono.

Damn people here really hate hard panning but personally I love it, some of my favourite albums have it. Blonde on Blonde would be the same without the hard panning.

How’s the arrangement?

Pan left ,and right and one left and right mixed track in the middle slightly lower in volume then the pans?

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There are panning plugins that allow planning only the upper part of the sound, while keeping the bottom centered. This does reduce the disjointed feeling, especially on headphones.

Isn't it all about balance? LCR style, just me thinking, it means not everything is in any one of those 3 spaces. Also the balance thing, if you place something on the left something else goes right in a relatively equal way. Some things like bass and some vocals are centered. Other things pan hard LR. You can still be creative I think, do whatever makes it sound musical and good.

Hmm... there's little conversation here about the artistic merit of this technique. It was all the rage to fling things left and right when stereo recordings became achievable and fashionable, and playback systems allowed for some degree of real world replication, but is it necessary? Yep it can widen the experience and allow for a more immersive vibe, but the question should be, what best serves this artistic ideal...and does this tune slap! Just my opinion but throw a stereo delay on to give the perception of placement and 'wideness' and you're golden. Use volume and stereo reverb, placement and subtle EQ, you're sorted. Does the tune slap in mono... chances are it will slap in stereo too, regardless of where you place things.

I just wanna drop this here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yf7OKBlvAig&list=RDyf7OKBlvAig&start_radio=1&pp=ygUic3dpbmcgbG8gbWFnZWxsYW4gZGlydHkgcHJvamVjdG9yc6AHAQ%3D%3D

I think this gets at the idea of a mix being a musical arrangement at the end of the day. If you take one element and just throw it way to the side, its going to stand out, which is a musical decision. It can create a sense of being unbalanced, the question is where does that feeling of being out of balance fit into the song? Which element, or which element at a specific moment asks to awkwardly stick out? think of it like dissonance in a chord, you wouldn't want this never-ending diminished tonal feel (or maybe you would) but a moment of intense dissonance can serve as a perfect way of segue in the composition, a way to make the return to the tonal center feel way better than it would otherwise. Similarly if you have a moment of purposefully unbalancing the stereo field, it sets the stage for another musical moment to follow.

Don't just hard pan the tracks, automate them so the motion of them panning can be heard. It's less "jarring" that way, but can still be as cheesy as heck if you're going for that.

Also if it's way too much stop short of hard left and right. 80% should still be dramatic. 

You can try double tracking to get a fuller sound