I'm not a pro in the music production. I take some advice from people who know stuff but at the end of the day, I try to hear what I'm doing. If the mix sounds good, it must be good but you can't get by without some rules I suppose. Maybe the most basic one is that you pan guitars left and right while voice, bass and drums are centered. This creates an impression of a band playing live. Hell, the good old Slayer is a perfect example of this set-up.
But while listening to the Beatles' White Album recently, I noticed some obvious mixing "mistakes".
You have guitars centered, while bass is on the left and drums on the right.
Then bass and drums are panned right, piano and lead guitar left and acoustic guitar is centered.
Then everything is centered.
And this mixing "chaos" continues throughout the album. Grab a pair of good headphones and just listen to the whole thing! I mean I know every Beatles' song by heart but after many years of listening to modern stuff, I find the oldies so damn refreshing.
So, does this mixing inconsistency make the music worse? Absolutely not! In my opinion, it adds another layer of variation and makes the sound even more interesting.
This White Album experience got me thinking that maybe it's a mistake to take for granted any rules (however, respect the constitution, folks) if you create music or any other crazy shit. Maybe things considered gold standards that many artists copy and reinforce is what makes a good portion of modern music uniform and boring.
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