Demos: The Most Valuable Thing For The Studio

Demos are single handedly the most valuable thing you can have to prepare for a studio recording session. It not only helps you, but it can help your engineer, bandmates, and possibly even marketing. Let’s discuss.

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How Demos Help You

You, the songwriter, can benefit from this the most! This is your chance to lay out everything and fine tune where and what things are in your song. Granted, you would need a DAW (recording software), audio interface (box that you can record and play audio with), and possibly a mic in order to get the most out of a demo, but you can also just use a phone at a band practice!

With a DAW to record your demo, you’ll be able to move sections around, try out new things, and so much more. It’s basically like a journal or “rough draft maker” for your songs! You get to see how things sound before getting to the studio, so the session can run as smooth as butter.

The best part is, if you really like the sound you got from your demo, you can use it in your final recording! No use in trying to replicate what’s already good.

How Demos Help Your Bandmates

Things can get difficult if you decide to make some changes last minute. With a demo, you can send it straight to your bandmates so they know exactly what to expect coming into the studio! It’s a great practice tool to have if you can’t practice all together. You can have a version with the metronome, without a metronome, with or without certain parts, etc. Each of these versions are very useful trying to practice.

Demos also give your bandmates a chance to hear a version of the song before actually recording. They may have suggestions to fine tune what’s there or point out any potential issues before finding out at the actual recording session.

How Demos Help Your Engineer

Demos are a godsend for engineers. Usually, the engineers have to go in blind without ever hearing what it is they are recording until they are actually recording. Providing a demo to your engineer with ample time before the session, allows the engineer to plan massively!

The engineer can map out the session by placing markers at the different sections so they can move around the session faster and easier, they can plan what mics to use, where to place them, and get an overall vibe out of the demo that they can emphasize for the bigger picture. They can suggest instrumentation, arrangement, writing, etc improvements from an engineer’s perspective, something very valuable from strictly an audio standpoint.

Demos are so valuable in fact, I offer a 10% discount on recording when supplied with a fully thought-out demo, given a decent amount of time before the session, from now until forever. Yes, they are that valuable!!

How Demos Help With Marketing

There’s a few ways demos can help with marketing, but you might have to get creative with it. For instance, if you have a whole catalog of demos, you can ask your audience which ones they like best and that will help you create some content, while also seeing what songs would be best to record.

If you’re planning on promoting your project after it’s been released, which I highly suggest you do, you can send it to radio stations and news channels before your project has been completed to see if they would like to help promote it in exchange for an interview and backstory. This gives them and you time to prepare, and also get booked on a time slot!

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Demos are the one thing that unifies everything together before the recording session. It’s pretty common to start with a rough draft when it comes to writing, so why can’t demos be the same? Besides, they’re super fun to make! What are you waiting for? Get to it!

If you need to write a song to record your demo, I've got a little document to help you write it! I call it the Top-Down Songwriting Pyramid. All you have to do is subscribe to receive email notifications for new blog posts that have been published over at the blog homepage, and don't worry, you can unsubscribe at any time! You can even unsubscribe right after downloading the document, though you'll be missing out on some posts not being shared on social media!

All the best!

-Michael