Demo reels

[MattCurious]

Hi guys

I've had some lovely feedback recently and have been encouraged to put a demo reel together to shop to libraries directly. It's not something I've done before so I have some obvious questons. Let me know if they're answered elsewhere:

- How many cues?
- Should they be one genre or a range?
- Should they be one style within a genre or a range?
- And of course any other advice.

Thanks
Matt

[guscave]

I just did 4 separate reels (Rock, Hip Hop, Electronic and Latin) and have had some really good results. I kept them very short (under 2 minutes). I sent the libraries links to the ones I felt would be most useful to them. It's important you research the libraries to see what they're in need of, otherwise you maybe spinning your wheels.

[MattCurious]

Thanks for that - do you mean that you kept the demo to under 2 minutes or that you had a few cues on there, with each cue under 2 minutes?
Cheers
Matt

[guscave]

I kept the whole reel at about 2 minutes. Here's an example of my Latin Reel:

https://app.box.com/s/nbqqwgamm26dpil6f080324v0z2qu1f2

[mobster85]

Gus this is great. Thanks for sharing.

[sansharbour]

Very interesting post

Will come in handy

Thx

[waveheavy]

Hi Matt,

In my course at Berklee for film and TV scoring we did a demo reel of our class compositions. Our instructor (Ben Newhouse) said to try and keep the demo reel to one style, like ours was strictly for TV and film compositions. So for a different genre a different demo reel. When promoting to libraries you'd simply send them links to whatever demo reels (SoundCloud, DropBox, etc.) that you want them to review. Idea is to show off as many styles within that genre as you can. (With the TV and film music we were doing, it was love ballad, sad ballad, supernatural grandeur, horror, action, fantasy, etc.). You don't have to include the whole composition, just the parts you feel outlines your abilities of what you write. Some did sound-on-sound type production (crossfades between songs), others just a slight pause between songs. You'd naturally want your best sounding work to play first.

Here's a cheesy example of the demo I did for that class. Turn your volume down because the start song begins on a loud hit. Most all of these examples were compositions scored to short film snippets:

https://soundcloud.com/waveheavy/demo-reel/s-rVP4j

[MattCurious]

Thanks, Dave - that's really helpful

A manager at Air Management kindly gave me some advice on this when I was booking with one of their engineers for the project - she recommended up to 8 tracks of about 2 min, showing different styles in the genre to mix it up a bit. She also recommended sprinkling in some stuff from adjacent genres for variation, so you might tip over into action from heavy tension, for example.

She also recommended double checking the submission guidelines for each library - if they want no more than three tracks, don't send them a link to eight, for example.

[waveheavy]

Sounds about right. I'd say no more than 3 links to tracks is the average pitch. If they like it they'll ask for more. Sending a link to a demo track is just one way to go.

[DesireInspires]

I have many placements out there and I have never used a demo reel.