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For the independent musician, sounding great isn't a rarity only available to hit artists anymore - it is a necessity. Music sales may have diminished, 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. Let's face it, there is no excuse for an artist to release poor recordings. For some people, audio engineers are still a mystery. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of sound, creating phony, auto-tuned, robots out of untalented artists. This, however, is far from the truth. Every record, 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 occurs in the recording studio. The mix engineer takes all of the separate audio tracks and crafts the music to sound great and convey the song's emotion. He sets correct levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds creative effects where needed to enhance the artist's vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses unique tools and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the song for final release and ensure the recording 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. 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 a band'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 concerts, purchase apparel, and follow and interact with the group through social media. As the artist grows in popularity, their music may be chosen for sync placements in film and TV, which not only provides great exposure, it also pays very well. To make it to this stage however, it all begins with a great song and polished recording. The rise of do-it-yourself recording has led to more artists releasing music than ever before. With a powerful computer, some mics, a DAW, and a little knowledge, anyone can create and distribute music. One area where many musicians fall short is failing to recognize their weaknesses in audio engineering. An experienced engineer has the right gear, but most importantly the knowledge to make a recording reach its full potential. Though it can be difficult for an artist, letting go and trusting your engineer 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 a good amount of time in pre-production, ensuring your song and arrangement are as strong as possible. Then and only then, go to the best studio you can afford to record your tracks. Connect with a local or online mix engineer within your budget whose work and personality you connect with, and tweak the mix until you're satisfied. Finally, send the songs off to the mastering engineer for that final polish. Once your recording is finished, you can get the music into multiple sites and into the phones and computers of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the definition of the contemporary mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. Scott has mixed for multitudes of artists and labels 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, provides artists and record labels with spectacular sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Get in touch with Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com
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music mixing, vocal mixing, audio mixing, audio engineer,
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