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For the independent artist, sounding great isn't a rarity only available to well-funded artists anymore - it is a requirement. Music sales may have diminished, 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 fans 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 sub-par recordings. For many, audio engineers are still conundrum. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of music, creating false, auto-tuned, robots out of untalented artists. This, however, is far from the truth. Every recording, no matter the genre, gets touched by a tracking 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 occurs in the recording studio. The mix engineer takes all of the separate audio tracks and crafts the music to sound correct and convey the song's emotion. He sets proper levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds special effects where needed to enhance the artist's vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses unique equipment and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the production for final release and ensure the sound plays back well on a variety of speakers. "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 big dough currently is in live shows, publishing, sync placements, and merchandise. When a fan connects with a band's music, they'll listen to their music, tweet, and share the music with their friends. The fans want to help the artist and buy tickets to their shows, purchase apparel, and follow and interact with the artist through social media. As the musician grows in popularity, their music may be chosen for sync placements in film and TV, which not only provides great exposure, it also pays 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 microphones, a digital audio workstation, 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 engineer has the right gear, but most importantly the skills to make a production 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 crowd. Fans 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 strong as possible. Then and only then, go to the best studio you can afford to record your tracks. Hire a local or online mix engineer within your budget whose work and personality you connect with, and tweak the mixdown until you're satisfied. Lastly, send the songs off to mastering for that final polish. Once your production is finished, 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 modern mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. Scott has mixed for countless music groups 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 recording artists with great sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Get in touch with Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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