The conventional methods for determining the magnitude of an earthquake such as Richter magnitude, Nuttli magnitude etc. are based mainly on peak-to-peak amplitudes of different phases on the seismic trace. These magnitude scales were developed in the past during the days when we had only paper seismic recordings. The conventional method for determining moment magnitude obtained from seismic moment is measured actually as the low frequency level of the displacement spectrum. Both of the above mentioned methods ignore a lot of the information, which is provided in a modern digital 3-component seismogram. In this study we explore the applicability of total signal energy as the main parameter to be used in magnitude estimation. Over 2100 three-component seismic traces from 258 local and regional earthquakes recorded on the Southern Ontario Seismic /POLARIS networks were used in this study. To relate the new energy magnitude scale to the old ones, including Mw, we have calculated most known magnitude types and the seismic moment of the earthquakes. To carry out this work, an automatic procedure was developed for measuring the peak-to peak amplitudes, periods, duration, and signal energy for each seismic trace. For calculation of the seismic moment, an iterative technique was developed to separate the effects of source functions from site response and geometrical spreading and attenuation effects. We have compared our energy magnitude measurements with the other well-known magnitude measurements by monitoring the solution errors. Our results show that the measurements of total seismic signal energy in both the P- and S-wave trains can improve the precision of the earthquake magnitude significantly and reduce much of the scatter found in conventional magnitude measurements.