Article by Dan Guerrie. The first thing you're probably asking is, "Who is this guy and why does he think he needs to remix my album? - It's perfect just the way it is!" The fact is your mix isn't perfect, at least to their ears and a remix is necessary before they'll feel comfortable playing your recording for other people. Most of the relationships that you'll have within the recording industry are very fragile. Many times you're only one flop album, production, mix or artist presentation away from losing that contact permanently. As a mixer and producer it's essential to my career that I preserve my reputation with other industry professionals. Consequently, I never send anyone's album to any of my contacts unless I've mixed.it (this also doesn't mean I send everything I mix to them either). This is the only way I have to control the quality of what is getting sent to others in the industry. Here's an example of why you want to seriously consider letting someone remix your songs. I was invited to participate as a panelist at the Durango Songwriters' conference (probably the best one of these types of conferences in the world). One of the other panelists was the head of A&R for a very successful Nashville based publisher. After the session ended he said "We're looking for some music right now - if you mix anything good why don't you send it to me?" I sent the word to some famous musician contacts and asked them they'd let me present their music to this publisher. My only terms were that if I felt like the song would need a remix before I forwarded it to the publisher they'd let me do it. I got deluged with CDs from not only my contacts but also from their friends and bandmates. I made the same offer to a unknown musician friend who was struggling to get his very good project noticed. At first he was excited for the opportunity, after all you don't get a shot at signing with a large Nashville publisher every day. A couple of days later he calls me and says "I've been thinking about it and the mixes I've been doing at my house are perfect and I don't want anyone screwing with them, so I'll just have to pass on this one if you don't want to use them the way they are". I didn't feel good about what I was hearing and without a remix I wasn't going send any of his songs to the publisher. So, needless to say, his songs never got presented to the head of A&R at the publisher, the very person who could have helped make his career. To this day he's still on the hustle to get anyone with influence in the industry to look at his band and has turned down other offers from producers and attorneys to present his songs to major label A&R under the condition that they could remix his record. There's no denying the fact that you have to let other people become involved in your project if you expect them to help you promote your career in music. Now that we've sorted that out, let's get back to how you're going to get those tracks to a mixer, producer, or A&R guy. Here are the steps you'll need to do to get your tracks ready to send to a mix engineer. I get projects to mix that have been recorded on a wide range of equipment (I recently mixed a project that was recorded on Tascam DA-88 recorders). Whether you've recorded using software, a dedicated hard disk recorder, modular digital recorder, workstation or analog multitrack you're going to need to get those tracks converted to digital files to make your multitrack recording compatible with all DAWs and hard hisk recorders. If your project was recorded on modular digital multitracks (the Tascam DA88), ADATs or analog multitrack, you'll need to find someone who can bounce those tracks over to a Pro Tools or a similar DAW so they can be turned into audio files. There are studios and services that can do this for you. Sometimes the mixer or producer can help you get this done but