For the independent recording artist, sounding great isn't a rarity only available to big time artists anymore - it is a must. 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 listeners than ever before in history! Musicians 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 release poor recordings. For some people, audio engineers are still conundrum. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of sound, creating fake, auto-tuned, robots out of unskilled artists. This, however, is far from fact. Every recording, no matter the genre, gets taken care of by a recording 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 happens in the recording studio. The mix engineer takes all of the separate audio tracks and crafts the music to sound convincing and convey the song's emotion. He sets correct levels, panning, equalization, compression, and adds creative effects where possible to complement the musician's vision. Lastly, 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 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. Recorded music is more often used as promotional tool for musicians. The real money these days is in live shows, publishing, film and TV placements, and merchandising. When a listener connects with an artist's music, they'll listen to their records, tweet, and share the music with their friends. The fans want to help the artist and buy tickets to their concerts, 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 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 DIY recording has led to more bands releasing music than ever before. With a powerful PC, some mics, a DAW, and a little know-how, anyone can record and release 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 difficult for an artist, letting go and trusting your mixer will take your productions to the next level and help you stand out from the others. 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 solid as possible. Then and only then, book time in 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 like, and tweak the mixdown until you're happy. Lastly, send the songs off to the mastering engineer for that final touch. Once your recording is complete, you can get the music into multiple sites and into the phones and computers of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the ultimate example of the modern mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. Scott has mixed for multitudes of recording artists from around the world 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 industry standard sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Get in touch with Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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