For the independent musician, sounding great isn't a luxury only available to well-funded artists anymore - it is a necessity. 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. Let's face it, there is no excuse for an artist to put out sub-par recordings. To many, audio engineers are still a mystery. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of music, creating phony, auto-tuned, machines out of unskilled artists. This, however, is far from the truth. Every recording, no matter the type, gets touched by a recording engineer, mix 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 occurs in the recording studio. The mix engineer takes all of the separate music tracks and crafts the music to sound correct and convey the song's emotion. He sets the right levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds creative effects where possible to complement the artist's vision. Finally, the mastering engineer uses unique tools and highly trained ears in an acoustically sound room to subtly polish and prepare the song for final release and ensure the recording 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 artists and labels. The most income currently is in touring, publishing, film and TV placements, and merchandise. When a fan connects with a band's music, they'll listen to their music, comment, and share the music with their friends. The fans want to support the artist and buy tickets to their shows, purchase t-shirts, 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 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 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 DAW, and a little knowledge, anyone can record and release music. One area where many musicians 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 recordings 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 a good amount of time in pre-production, ensuring your composition and arrangement are as strong as possible. Then and only then, get into the best studio you can afford to lay down your basic tracks. Connect with a local or online mix engineer within your budget whose work and personality you like, and tweak the mixdown until you're happy. Finally, send the songs off to the mastering engineer for that final touch. Once your production is completed, you can get the music into multiple sites and into the ears of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the ultimate example of today's cutting-edge mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. He has mixed for 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 musicians with spectacular sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Visit Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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