Music Lesson : 3 ways to sound like a major artist

The top three elements of a commercial song:

1) Good recording
2) Good production
3) Good mix

Don’t skip over these three items, because if you underestimate them; then you deny yourself a great deal of power that you have at your disposal. When you go to industry conferences, they spend a lot of time talking about the business side of things contracts, how to get your music in the hands of executives, copyrights, how to sell your music, how to use the internet properly, but before you can do that– you need to do this.

Step #1
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Anyone can BUY a good recording. You can easily pay $80 an hour to record your music at a high quality studio that has Avalon mic pres, Neuman Mics, A 700 sq ft live room, 3 iso rooms, and a beta 57 on the kick drum, a brand new Steinway baby grand piano… but anybody can do this.

This means that you definitely should aim for the highest quality recording input you can.

Step #2

But Step #1 is actually step #2, and this is where it all goes wrong. Just because you have good recording, doesn’t mean you have a good song. When you’re working on an album, it needs to be produced extremely well. Not just the music, but the vocals. If you’re working with a producer who lets you get away with flat or sharp notes, then you are wasting your time and money. If you’re working with a producer who lets you record sloppy vocal arrangements, or you aren’t using any of the the popular trends of today’s chart topping charts, then again… you’re wasting your time and money. So you MUST have good production.

This means good vocal harmony, good lead vocals, you’re hitting the right notes, your recording takes don’t sound choppy, and ultimately it sounds like an art form…not just a basic recording. Because after all, it is a production… think of it as an intimate intense spider man movie. Use the effects but use them sparingly, make it realistic, make it live, bring it to life.

Step #3 -

The mix. After you’ve recorded the music, after it’s produced well, you need to make sure you go through great lengths to mix it. Mix it like its going straight to Clive Davis’ office. And let me tell you this.

Last year a great mastering engineer told me… the mastering process only works when the mix is ALREADY perfect. Other than that, it doesn’t help much. So you need a perfect mix. Everything sits perfectly inside of the actual sound-space.

The kick drum isn’t overpowering the bass, the bass is compressed, the vocals are spread to give you the stereo sound in the stereo field… but if you spread the background vocals out, then you need to bring some other instrumentations back inside of the stereo field so it doesn’t clash with the vocals which are spread wide.

So we’re talking about panning, EQ, compression, low cut filters, high pass filters, reverb. All of these tools are the primary tools you need to make your mix sound radio ready.

For every track – you will need to use EQ and compression. Use high pass filters and low shelves on just about every track, to carve away the frequencies that don’t belong in the mix. It might take you 5-10 hours to get a perfect mix…

But this is the trick. People NEED to perceive that you ARE a major label artist, even if you aren’t. These three elements have a lot to do with this. No one outweighs the other. If you don’t have a good recording, you can’t have a good mix. If you recorded distorted source material, then give it up. If you are trying to mix a song that is a basic boring production…then you are wasting your time.

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Last but not least… if you are not good at mixing or you don’t find it necessary to put the time into mixing…then hire a mix engineer. It will be worth spending $100 or $200 to get a song professionally mixed AND even mastered by a seasoned professional…because that’s what they do all day long.

When you’re competing against these major labels and major artists, you have to keep in mind that they have ALOT more money and a lot more time to devote to this.