For the independent recording artist, sounding great isn't a luxury only available to well-funded artists anymore - it is a must. 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. Simply put, there is no excuse for an artist to put out poor recordings. To many, audio engineers are still conundrum. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of music, creating false, auto-tuned, drones out of untalented artists. This, however, is far from the truth. Every recording, no matter the genre, gets handled by a tracking engineer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer. The recording engineer uses a plethora 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 music tracks and crafts the music to sound great and convey the song's emotion. He sets proper levels, panning, equalization, compression, and adds special effects where needed to complement the musician's vision. Finally, the mastering engineer uses unique tools and highly trained ears in an acoustically sound room to subtly polish and prepare the production for final release and ensure the music plays back well on 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. The most income currently is in touring, publishing, film and TV 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 shows, purchase t-shirts, and follow and interact with the band 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 quite well. To make it to this stage however, it all begins with well written song and convincing recording. The rise of DIY recording has led to more bands releasing music than ever before. With a powerful PC, 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 audio engineering. An experienced mixer has the right tools, but most importantly the knowledge to make a production reach its full potential. Though it can be hard for an artist, letting go and trusting your mixer will take your productions 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 solid as possible. Then and only then, book time in the best studio you can afford to record your basic tracks. Find a local or online mix engineer within your budget whose work and personality you connect with, and tweak the mixdown until you're happy. Lastly, send the songs off to mastering for that final polish. Once your production is finished, you can get the music into multiple retailers and into the ears of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the definition 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, provides recording artists with industry standard sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Get in touch with Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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