For the independent recording artist, sounding good isn’t a rarity only available to big time artists anymore – it is a requirement. 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 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. Simply put, there is no excuse for an artist to put out poor recordings.
For some people, audio engineers are still conundrum. To others, they are ‘evil’ manipulators of sound, creating false, auto-tuned, robots out of unskilled artists. This, however, is far from fact. Every record, no matter the type, gets taken care of by a tracking 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 audio tracks and crafts the music to sound correct and convey the song’s emotion. He sets correct levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds creative effects where needed to complement the musician’s vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses unique tools and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the production for final release and ensure the recording 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.
Recorded music is more often used as promotional vessel for artists and labels. The big dough currently is in converts, publishing, film and TV placements, and merchandising. When a listener 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 very well. To make it to this stage however, it all begins with a great song and quality recording.
The rise of do-it-yourself recording has led to more musicians 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 audio engineering. An experienced mixer 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 mixer will take your recordings 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 a good amount of time in pre-production, ensuring your composition and arrangement are as solid as possible. Then and only then, go to 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 gel with, and tweak the mixdown until you’re happy. Finally, send the songs off to a mastering house for that final polish. 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 definition of today’s modern mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. Scott has worked with multitudes 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 musicians with industry standard sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Visit Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com This article is copyright protected.