For the independent recording artist, sounding amazing isn't a rarity 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 on its way out. 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 release poor recordings. To many, audio engineers are still conundrum. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of sound, creating phony, auto-tuned, drones out of untalented artists. This, however, is far from the truth. Every record, no matter the genre, gets handled by a tracking engineer, mix 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 mixing engineer takes all of the separate music tracks and crafts the music to sound great and convey the song's emotion. He sets correct levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds special effects where needed to enhance the artist's vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses special tools and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the production for final release and ensure the sound translates to 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 tool for musicians. The big dough these days is in touring, publishing, film and TV placements, and merchandising. When a fan connects with an artist's music, they'll listen to their music, comment, 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 group through social media. As the group 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 a great 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 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 mixer has the right tools, but most importantly the knowledge 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. 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 song and arrangement are as strong as possible. Then and only then, book time in the best studio you can afford to record your tracks. Hire a local or online mixing engineer within your budget whose work and personality you gel with, and tweak the mixdown until you're happy. Lastly, send the songs off to a mastering house for that final touch. Once your production is finished, you can get the music into multiple venues and into the phones and computers of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the epitome of the cutting-edge mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. He has collaborated with 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 recording artists with great sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Visit Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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