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For the independent artist, sounding amazing isn't a luxury only available to hit artists anymore - it is a necessity. Music sales may have went down, but that doesn't mean that recorded music is on its way out. Far from it. More music is being consumed on more devices by more fans than ever before in history! Musicians 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 release poor recordings. To 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, mix engineer, and mastering engineer. The recording engineer utilizes 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 music tracks and crafts the music to sound correct and convey the song's emotion. He sets correct levels, panning, equalization, compression, and adds special effects where possible to complement the musician's vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses unique tools and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the music for final release and ensure the recording 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. Recorded music is more often used as promotional vessel for musicians. The most income these days is in converts, publishing, film and TV placements, and merchandising. When a fan connects with an artist's music, they'll listen to their records, comment, 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 artist through social media. As the artist grows in popularity, their music may be chosen for sync placements in film and TV, which not only provides great exposure, it also pays quite well. To make it to this stage however, it all begins with well written song and quality recording. The rise of do-it-yourself recording has led to more musicians releasing music than ever before. With a powerful laptop, some mics, a DAW, and a little knowledge, anyone can create and release music. One area where many musicians fall short is failing to recognize their weaknesses in mixing. An experienced mixer has the right tools, but most importantly the skills to make a recording reach its full potential. Though it can be difficult for an artist, letting go and trusting your 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 composition and arrangement are as solid as possible. Then and only then, go to 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 connect with, and tweak the mix until you're satisfied. Finally, send the songs off to mastering for that final polish. Once your recording is completed, you can get the music into multiple venues and into the ears of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the epitome of today's modern mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. He has mixed for a myriad of artists world-wide 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 great sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Get in touch with Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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