THE DEMO PROJECT

A modest proposal for music.mefi - THE DEMO PROJECT

Here's an idea I had yesterday. How many of us actually have a proper up-to-date demo? How about a music.mefi project to get as many of us as want to to choose, record and mix a full-on three-song demo. Maybe with a time limit - the end of the year perhaps? Maybe there could be an associated projects.mefi where the demos could be featured, or a podcast or something.

For me, this would be a different kind of thing to the usual fire-and-forget music.mefi recording. Might be an opportunity to rethink/refresh things that had already been posted, or totally re-record, or do something new.

And an opportunity to discuss what makes a great demo, what the purposes are (might be different for different people), and what to do with it afterwards. For example, I'd like to sell some songs. Others might want to get gigs, give to family/friends, or land a deal.

It might also be an opportunity to invite new people in and share some skills.

posted by unSane (7 comments total)

A good performance of a good song usually makes a great demo - everything else is embroidery, including the recording quality....

Seriously - I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here old spud. In some respects everything everyone's bunged on here is a demo. Personally, I'd not be particularly motivated to record a slightly better demo of...er...a demo. I'd be more interested in taking things up a level to a releasable quality product. But I haven't the resources to book a studio, pay an engineer etc. And if I'm brutally honest with myself I don't have the belief in the quality of my material to justify that kind of outlay even if I had the disposable cash. It'd amount to vanity publishing - which I've always seen as something rather pitiful. So basically, fire & forget is squarely where it's at with me.

Good luck with the project though!
posted by MajorDundee at 1:54 PM on September 14, 2011

I think of stuff on here as demos of demos frankly.

What are your three best songs? How could you record them as perfectly as you can, given your current resources? When you listen to the versions you have now, what bugs you about them?
posted by unSane at 2:00 PM on September 14, 2011

Yea, maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but I can see this building up a good head of steam. There are quite a few folks here who gig regularly, some of whom have asked over the years about how to put together a good demo, what makes a good demo, etc. MefiMusic being a kind of musician's workshop anyway, I think this is pretty cool.

The last time I made a demo I was using a crappy pirated early edition of cakewalk on win 95. It sucked really bad but had some good ideas on it and helped me form up a band. That was when burning your own CD was just coming into fashion. Nowadays I'd just put my demo on a little tech-deck skateboard thumb drive.

Anyhow, cool stuff, unSane!
posted by snsranch at 4:14 PM on September 14, 2011

I"m with Major. Why record a slightly better version of a Demo?

My demos usually end up being my finished product anyway; maybe slight tweaking from the demo to the 'release'.

I don't really get the point of a '3 track demo' in this day and age of Soundcloud, bandcamp, garageband etc. Is this for getting gigs? or shopping to labels?

I dont' think Labels these days are very interested in Demos.
posted by mary8nne at 4:38 AM on September 17, 2011

Trying to be more positive about unSane's idea here (apologies mate if my comments seemed negative) I think there's a way of putting together the requisite promotional shop window, but as part of something a bit less DIY demo. I'm still holding a bit of a torch for the idea that we should be looking at the feasibility of releasing a "Best Of MeFiMu" or something with a more snappy title. There's so much good and interesting stuff on the site that has this tiny, tiny audience and it's a real shame that it doesn't get wider promotion. An annual album would be quite an incentive for contributors. And it could be done for pennies I should think.

We can of course do this without MeFi being involved - the control room never seems to be bursting with enthusiasm about this kind of breakout idea in any case. Hell we could even set up an indie label (how about Shattered Records?) and drop any Metafilter references if it came to it. I guess that if a few of us decided to go for this and do an electronic-only release I'd be keener to re-record a track as a possible contribution. But we'd need to organise mastering and artwork...hhmmm. And it would be hard to choose the tracks for release without pissing people off. We've been round this one before haven't we, so I'm not holding my breath. Sighs....
posted by MajorDundee at 12:40 PM on September 17, 2011

I dont' think Labels these days are very interested in Demos.

I know dance labels are interested in finished records. The most you'll get out of most of them is them paying some guy $100 to remaster your track in waves.
posted by empath at 2:22 PM on September 29, 2011

Well, maybe it should be to get three totally finished tracks then.
posted by unSane at 2:46 PM on September 29, 2011