Today’s blog is written by HowToLicenseYourMusic.com’s resident producer/engineer Gary Gray from Los Angeles. Gary’s recent successes include 14 of his last 14 submissions being accepted by publishers and supervisors, including an exclusive paid publishing deal with Megatrax, one of the largest and most respected licensing corporations in the U.S. 12 of the 14 tracks have resulted in checks-in-hand already.

In addition, the Music Supervisor for A&E used Gary’s latest submission as an example of music production standards for other composers working for A&E.

Gary and I have also been busy on two projects recently, one, a revolutionary new course on music production which will be released on the 22nd of July called Music Production FundaMENTALs, and the other, a collaboration in the studio on several songs which has resulted in our first track already being accepted by the Music Supervisor for A&E. Stay tuned on that front. More good news on the way.

Check out the trailer for our new course on my blog.

Gary took time out of his busy schedule to write the following blog to help anyone starting out with music production -- or anyone wanting to increase their chances for landing licensing deals – by laying out simple, effective actions you can take right now to make your mixes sound better.

Over to you Gary. . .

Thanks Aaron!  There are three misleading “facts” (lies) that I run into over and over while teaching, while collaborating with other composers and while shopping music for licensing deals. All three lies deal with music production. These three topics, along with 6 others, are taken up in great detail in the upcoming course Music Production FundaMENTALs, which will be released on the 22nd of July.

It’s an 8-part course, with 10 videos, lots of photos, screenshots, pdf’s, and sample recordings – including mixes, masters and stems for you to mix per the instructions on the course, and reference mixes, masters and stem files of tracks that are license-ready – so that you’ll never again need to ask “What does ‘radio-ready’ quality mean?” Or “what should I listen for when I’m mixing?” Or “How do I get my tracks to sound like they should sound to get licensed?”

Unacceptable music production is the number one reason tracks get rejected and great music production is the number one reason tracks get accepted, so I’ve gone over this curriculum with a fine-toothed comb. Where did I get this information? From music supervisors that I collaborate with in my studio.  

This course is the result of 8 years of work and 30 years of research. After watching over 400 tutorials myself during the course of my research, and after spending the last year beta-testing the curriculum on my students, I am very excited about the upcoming release.  Anyway, more on that later.

(You can find out more about the course by watching the Trailer Video for the course above)
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For now, let’s get into three areas that can help you improve your mixes right now...