Producing Music? Connect With A Mixing Engineer To Release Music That Reaches Fans

By Author: Bob Smith
Total Articles: 223
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For the independent recording artist, sounding good isn't a luxury only available to hit artists anymore - it is a requirement. 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.
For many, audio engineers are still mysterious. To others, they are ‘evil' manipulators of music, creating phony, auto-tuned, robots out of terrible artists. This, however, is far from fact. Every record, no matter the genre, gets taken care of by a recording engineer, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer. The recording engineer uses a plethora of microphones and technique to accurately ...
... capture and record the artist's performance as it occurs 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 the right levels, panning, EQ, compression, and adds special effects where needed to complement the artist's vision. Lastly, the mastering engineer uses unique equipment and highly trained ears in an acoustically accurate room to subtly polish and prepare the production for final release and ensure the music 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 tool for musicians. The real money currently is in live shows, publishing, film and TV placements, and merchandising. When a listener connects with a band's music, they'll listen to their music, tweet, and share the music with their friends. The fans want to support 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 movies and TV, which not only provides great exposure, it also pays well. To make it to this stage however, it all starts with well written song and quality recording.
The rise of do-it-yourself recording has led to more musicians releasing music than ever before. With a powerful computer, some microphones, a DAW, and a little knowledge, anyone can create and distribute music. One area where many artists fall short is failing to recognize their weaknesses in audio engineering. An experienced engineer has the right tools, but most importantly the knowledge to make a production reach its full potential. Though it can be difficult for an artist, letting go and trusting your engineer 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 the proper time in pre-production, ensuring your composition and arrangement are as strong as possible. Then and only then, book time in the best studio you can afford to lay down your basic tracks. Connect with a local or online mixing engineer within your budget whose work and personality you like, and tweak the mixdown until you're happy. Finally, send the songs off to mastering for that final touch. Once your record is complete, you can get the music into multiple venues and into the ears of your listeners and fans. Scott Horton is the ultimate example of today's cutting-edge mixing engineer/producer/songwriter. He has mixed for an endless number of music groups 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 recording artists with industry standard sounding mixes which make impressions that count. Come say hi to Scott at http://www.virtualmixengineer.com