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For the independent recording artist, sounding great isn't a luxury only available to big time artists anymore - it is essential. Music sales may have wanted, 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. Simply put, there is no excuse for an artist to put out poor recordings. For many, audio engineers are still mysterious. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of music, creating fake, auto-tuned, robots out of terrible artists. This, however, is far from the truth. Every record, no matter the type, gets handled by a recording engineer, mix engineer, and mastering engineer. The recording engineer uses many of microphones and technique to accurately capture and record the artist's performance as it happens in the recording studio. The mix engineer takes all of the separate audio tracks and crafts the music to sound great and convey the song's emotion. He sets the right levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds creative effects where needed to complement the musician's vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses unique equipment and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the track for final release and ensure the sound 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 vessel for musicians. The real money these days is in live shows, publishing, sync placements, and merchandise. 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 help the artist and buy tickets to their concerts, purchase t-shirts, and follow and interact with the artist 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 quite well. To make it to this stage however, it all starts with well written song and polished recording. The rise of DIY recording has led to more musicians releasing music than ever before. With a powerful computer, some microphones, a DAW, and a little know-how, anyone can record and distribute music. One area where many musicians fall short is failing to recognize their weaknesses in audio engineering. An experienced engineer has the right equipment, but most importantly the knowledge to make a recording reach its full potential. Though it can be hard for an artist, letting go and trusting your mix engineer will take your productions to the next level and help you stand out from the others. Listeners are instantly attracted to a well-written and performed song that sounds like a hit. Spend the proper time in pre-production, ensuring your composition and arrangement are as solid as possible. Then and only then, get into the best studio you can afford to record your basic tracks. Find a local or online mixing engineer within your budget whose work and personality you like, and tweak the mix until you're satisfied. Lastly, send the songs off to a mastering house for that final polish. Once your recording is completed, you can get the music into multiple sites and into the phones and computers of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the definition of the contemporary mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. He has worked with countless artists from around the world in all musical genres ranging from Pop, Pop-Rock, Hip-Hop,RnB, Urban and more. His online mixing and mastering service, Virtual Mix Engineer, provides recording artists with industry standard sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Come say hi to Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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