For the independent musician, sounding great isn’t a rarity only available to well-funded artists anymore – it is a necessity. Music sales may have tapered, 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. Let’s face it, there is no excuse for an artist to put out sub-par recordings.
For some people, audio engineers are still an enigma. To others, they are ‘evil’ manipulators of music, creating false, auto-tuned, robots out of untalented artists. This, however, is far from the truth. Every recording, no matter the genre, gets touched by a tracking 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 the right levels, panning, equalization, compression, and adds creative effects where needed to complement the musician’s vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses specialized equipment and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the track 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 vessel for musicians. The big dough currently is in touring, publishing, sync placements, and merchandising. When a fan connects with an artist’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 shows, purchase apparel, and follow and interact with the artist 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 quite well. To make it to this stage however, it all begins with well written song and polished recording.
The rise of DIY recording has led to more bands releasing music than ever before. With a powerful laptop, some mics, a DAW, and a little knowledge, anyone can record 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 skills to make a production reach its full potential. Though it can be hard for an artist, letting go and trusting your mix engineer 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 the proper 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 record your basic 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 satisfied. Lastly, send the songs off to a mastering house for that final touch. Once your production is complete, you can get the music into multiple stores 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 a myriad of artists and labels 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 artists and record labels with great sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Visit Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com This article is copyright protected.