"YOUR DEMO"
You've got a great
band, and a few great songs, and now your ready to get down to the business of
recording your demo. How a band presents itself and its music to industry
people, whether it be label executives, booking agents, club owners, or
managers, is extremely important. Your demo is your calling card, so you better
make it good1x And while a fancy CD jewel case with graphics and holographs is an
attention getter, it is not going to get you any farther than a nicely packaged
cassette with great music on it.
You will often hear A&R representatives say that the quality
of the recording doesn't matter, and that they can hear a great song no matter
what the production. In a few isolated cases that will be true, but in general,
most A&R people need to hear a somewhat produced recording. A&R
executives that can hear through a badly produced demo, or have the vision to
hear what a song done with just piano and voice can be made into, are few and
far between.
I have personally watched established A&R people listen to
20 seconds of a tape, and pull it out of the deck with the comment "that doesn't
sound good." So believe me when I tell you, it is imperative to make your
recording sound as much like your final vision of the song as possible. There is
also a danger of making your package too elaborate. It will definitely behoove
you to have a great looking CD package if you are releasing it yourself, and the
more sales you can generate the better your position when you approach industry
connections. However, one very successful "shopping" attorney has the view that
a demo that is on a cassette or a CD that is obviously only a demo recording, is
preferable to a finished album.
The reason he believes this is the fact that it gives the
listener the impression that the music is a basic starting point, and will allow
them to speculate on how great the song would be when recorded with a top notch
producer in a studio with the latest technology.
Another problem on some of the CDs I receive is the concept of
the album as a whole. For your own CD sales, treat the album as you envision it,
with the song order and introduction bringing your vision to life. However, for
purposes of industry interest, tape the three or four songs you want to present
and send the tape. Unless you have the first four songs as your "presentation
songs", they more often than not won't get heard. Industry people routinely
listen to a little of each of the first few songs, and if nothing catches their
interest, that's all they will hear. So if your best material isn't right up
front, you won't get the shot you deserve1x
Hal B. Selzer
