For the independent recording artist, sounding great isn't a rarity only available to big time artists anymore - it is a requirement. Music sales may have went down, but that doesn't mean that recorded music is going away any time soon. Far from it. More music is being consumed on more devices by more listeners than ever before in history! Artists are making their music available on internet and satellite radio, online music streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Deezer, and YouTube, selling on direct-to-fan sites such as CD Baby, Bandcamp, and ReverbNation, and still pushing sales through ‘traditional' online retailers such as iTunes and Amazon MP3. Let's face it, there is no excuse for an artist to put out sub-par recordings. For many, audio engineers are still a mystery. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of music, creating fake, auto-tuned, drones out of terrible artists. This, however, is far from fact. Every recording, no matter the type, gets touched by a recording engineer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer. The recording engineer uses many of microphones and technique to accurately capture and record the artist's performance as it occurs in the recording studio. The mix engineer takes all of the separate audio tracks and crafts the music to sound convincing and convey the song's emotion. He sets proper levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds special effects where possible to complement the musician's vision. Finally, the mastering engineer uses special gear and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the song for final release and ensure the music translates to a variety of playback systems. "While many audio techniques can enhance the final production, we engineers are not magicians and can't replace a poor performance or terrible recording," says Scott of Virtual Mix Engineer. Recordings are more often used as promotional tool for artists and labels. The big dough currently is in converts, publishing, film and TV placements, and merchandising. When a listener connects with a band's music, they'll listen to their records, tweet, and share the music with their friends. The fans want to support the artist and buy tickets to their concerts, purchase t-shirts, and follow and interact with the group through social media. As the band grows in popularity, their music may be chosen for sync placements in movies and TV, which not only provides great exposure, it also pays well. To make it to this stage however, it all starts with well written song and convincing recording. The rise of do-it-yourself recording has led to more musicians releasing music than ever before. With a powerful computer, some mics, a digital audio workstation, and a little knowledge, anyone can record and release music. One area where many artists fall short is failing to recognize their weaknesses in mixing. An experienced engineer has the right gear, but most importantly the knowledge to make a recording reach its full potential. Though it can be difficult for an artist, letting go and trusting your mix engineer will take your recordings to the next level and help you stand out from the masses. Fans are instantly attracted to a well-written and performed song that sounds like a hit. Spend a good amount of time in pre-production, ensuring your song and arrangement are as strong as possible. Then and only then, book time in the best studio you can afford to lay down your tracks. Find a local or online mix engineer within your budget whose work and personality you gel with, and tweak the mixdown until you're satisfied. Finally, send the songs off to the mastering engineer for that final polish. Once your production is finished, you can get the music into multiple sites and into the ears of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the epitome of today's contemporary mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. He has collaborated with an endless number of recording artists the world over in all musical genres ranging from Pop, Pop-Rock, Hip-Hop,RnB, Urban and more. His online mixing and mastering service, Virtual Mix Engineer, delivers musicians with superb sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Come say hi to Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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