For the independent artist, sounding good isn't a rarity only available to hit artists anymore - it is essential. 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 poor recordings. To many, audio engineers are still mysterious. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of sound, creating fake, auto-tuned, machines out of terrible artists. This, however, is far from the truth. Every recording, no matter the type, gets touched by a recording engineer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer. The recording engineer utilizes 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 audio tracks and crafts the music to sound correct and convey the song's emotion. He sets the right levels, panning, equalization, compression, and adds special effects where needed to complement the musician's vision. Finally, the mastering engineer uses special tools and highly trained ears in an acoustically sound room to subtly polish and prepare the track 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. Recorded music is more often used as promotional vessel for musicians. The real money these days is in touring, publishing, sync placements, and merchandising. When a listener connects with a band'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 apparel, and follow and interact with the band through social media. As the band 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 starts with a great song and quality recording. The rise of DIY recording has led to more musicians releasing music than ever before. With a powerful PC, some mics, a DAW, and a little know-how, anyone can create and distribute 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 skills to make a recording reach its full potential. Though it can be hard for an artist, letting go and trusting your engineer will take your productions to the next level and help you stand out from the masses. Listeners 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, go to the best studio you can afford to record your tracks. Connect with a local or online mixing engineer within your budget whose work and personality you gel with, and tweak the mix until you're satisfied. Lastly, send the songs off to a mastering house for that final touch. Once your recording is complete, you can get the music into multiple retailers and into the phones and computers of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the epitome of the cutting-edge mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. Scott has worked with multitudes of 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 artists and record labels with industry standard sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Visit Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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