For the independent artist, sounding great isn’t a rarity only available to hit 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 poor recordings.
To many, audio engineers are still an enigma. To others, they are ‘evil’ manipulators of sound, creating phony, auto-tuned, machines out of untalented artists. This, however, is far from fact. Every record, no matter the type, gets taken care of 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 happens in the recording studio. The mixing engineer takes all of the separate music tracks and crafts the music to sound convincing and convey the song’s emotion. He sets proper levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds special effects where possible to complement the artist’s vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses specialized tools and highly trained ears in an acoustically sound room to subtly polish and prepare the music for final release and ensure the music plays back well on 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. The most income these days is in live shows, publishing, film and TV placements, and merchandise. When a fan connects with an artist’s music, they’ll listen to their music, tweet, 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 band through social media. As the artist grows in popularity, their music may be chosen for sync placements in movies and TV, which not only provides great exposure, it also pays very well. To make it to this stage however, it all starts with well written song and convincing recording.
The rise of DIY recording has led to more musicians 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 mixing. An experienced engineer has the right gear, 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 productions to the next level and help you stand out from the crowd. 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 strong as possible. Then and only then, get into 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 like, and tweak the mix until you’re happy. Lastly, send the songs off to a mastering house for that final polish. Once your record is complete, you can get the music into multiple outlets and into the phones and computers of your listeners and fans.Scott Horton is the definition of the cutting-edge mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. Scott has collaborated with an endless number 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, delivers recording artists with great sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Get in touch with Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com This article is copyright protected.