DEMO CD

[MrSamson]

What should one of these consist of?

Short sound clips, or 3 to 5 whole songs?

I have heard arguments for both...perhaps we should have both...but my question is what are sound guys and club owners going to expect from a DEMO cd designed and created mainly to attain gigs?

I can't imagine they have time to listen to a whole song...so the 30 second argument is good.

but then, they can fast forward....

My question is to those that have gigged before and dealt with this....what is the industry standard that club owners would expect from a band to fit them into a slot?

If you need more information to give a good response, please ask...

thanks in advance...

MrSamson

[Vinnie]

Here has been my experience. A few years ago my band put a CD together that consisted of 7 full songs. We demo'd that around the club scene and local radio. We received more response from people listening to local radio (at that time it was a college radio station) than we did from trying to get gigs from it.

One club owner told me that he never listened to the demo at all, but like our attitudes and booked us anyway. Another owner said he listened to the first 30 seconds of song one and hated it.

So, to give you some advice: It's a lose-lose deal. If you only record snippets, then your not exposing enough of your band to the people. Where as if you record full songs, your exposing your band to the people, but the club owners don't want to listen to an hour long demo.

So figure out what your goal is. If you only want to get gigs from it, then snippets. But if you want a larger fan base, I say make a full CD and hit local radio (college stations, local shows on major radio stations, etc.). We had a lot more publicity going through radio than we did putting flyers up on every utility pole.

I live in Dallas and we get about 1 song a month on a local Christian radio station that has no song restrictions. We gig about once every 2 months (or whenever we need extra cash) and always get a good turn out (100+ people).

I'm sure other people have different answers, this is just how we did it.

--Vinnie--

[bugman]

Vinnie's post got me thinking. Record full songs. Then (you can either do this in the studio or w/ your home computer) take snippets of songs and put them on a CD.

[bubinga]

I'd record full songs. If the owner wants to listen to snippets, he'll listen to snippets. But at least he can do both with full songs.

[zappatude]

Full songs. Then it is not an issue. If an owner wants to give a listen to just snippets he can push a couple of buttons but if he wants to hear a full song and it's not there then it could raise an eyebrow.

[show_no_mercy]

Here's what you do. If you have a CD with say 3 full songs you can have the first 3 tracks as the clips of the songs and the second 3 tracks as the full songs. This way, if they like the clips they can listen to the whole song. Also make sure that you list what is what... like track 1 is the clip of song x and track 4 is song x in its entirety

[Angelo Sascalla]

I don't know of any club owners who ever asked us for a snippet of your songs.
Since we played Blues, Rock, Jazz, Folk, R&B and Country we included two of each genre. We had a full cassette or CD.

The demos I've sent to Publishers/Attorneys/Mangers/A&R/Indies and who ever else wants to take a listen, I only put one or two on a CD. Always get permission and an address before sending a demo to anyone.
I do my own recording and spend conciderable time with each song. A sloppyly done song will get round filed pretty fast.

If I were still playing clubs today I'd have a CD with Full songs, one with Snippets and one with both. Be prepared. Have what they want, when they want it.

How you present your demo is as important as what is on it. Be professinal. Or at least act it. Sometimes it's hard to do. I'm well aware of that.

Oh, did I say that?

[Shibby]

you could make one snippet CD and one full song one to give the club owner the choice. Or you could send the full one to the radio stations and the snippets to the clubs.