eli5: How can music producers make a part of a song be heard on only one speaker?

Question

I’ve realised this with some songs eg Hate me by Ellie Goulding and juice wrld, when she says switch sides, the audio on one side seems to have less sound or something.

In: 0

Answer 1

When a song is recorded, each voice, each instrument is recorded on its own “track”, as if it was a completely solo performance for that singer or for that instrument. The producers then use [a board like this](https://blog.academyart.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/music-production-sound-design-sound-mixing-board.jpg) to control how loud or soft each instrument is, whether it goes on the left or the right speaker (or if it’s a Dolby Surround 7.1 recording, on which of the 7 speakers + 1 subwoofer it goes). The producer has full control over fading instruments and voices in and out, and in general “producing” the final version of the song, where all the instruments are voices are “mixed in” to create the complete song.