Recording Demos

[jay10music]

Couple things here to consider when using a legit studio in Nashville. If the musicians are playing "on the card" which THEY SHOULD, the demo rate is $150.00 per musician for a session (3 hours) and the session leader makes $300.00 for the session. That's DEMO SCALE. If you record a demo and plan to pitch it to film and tv, there are three ways you can go about this. A: Pay the players MASTER rate, which is double the demo scale. or B: Make sure you get the name and contact info of each player on your session. Tell them you plan to pitch it for film and television and if it gets picked up for a placement, go back and pay the players the difference between the demo scale you payed and the master scale for which they would then be entitled. or C: Ask each player to sign off on a "work for hire" agreement.I personally use choice B for my demos that I place in Film and TV. But you dont have to do it that way.Also, just be careful when someone tells you they can do your demo for 300 bucks here in nashville. See the demo sessions are done on volume to return a profit, and if they are using good union players, they would have to pay the union rate, which on a 4 piece session would be $750.00 for the 3 hour session. Then they have to cover the studio expenses (a decent studio averages about $50-$75 an hour). So if you look at the expenses of running a PROFESSIONAL Nashville demo session, the studio will need to cover about 10 hours of studio time, plus the players AND the singers (AFTRA-Union singers average about 120.00 per song for a lead). So total cost to the studio IF THEY ARE DOING EVERYTHING TOTALLY LEGIT and PRO is about $1970.00 on the low end. A studio should be able to do 6 songs on a session (its usually an all day event). So if they are only charging $300.00 per song they are only invoicing $1800.00. That means they would lose money right? So what does that tell us? It means that the players are probably not on the card and are being payed less, and the singers are probably being paid less. Does that mean the quality wont be the same? that all depends really I guess, but I prefer to keep things ont he up and up and use a studio (like mine) that abide by the standards set in nashville which is through the unions. Why are the unions important? These are pro-players. By paying them through the union, they are saving towards their pensions, they are helped with insurance for their families, etc. See what I mean? Again, its just all about being on the up and up.Hope that helped.

[sgs4u]

Thank you Jimi. What a breath of fresh air that post is!

[devin]

A question for Jimi...if I've only written one country song that's worth the effort, what are my options? Do I convince a few of my peers here to go in on 1/2 dozen tunes at once, so we make it worth everyone's while? This would kinda scare me...being indebted with folks I haven't shared a beer with.Can I send in my rough demo for a single track to the studio, and ask them to fit it in when they have an opening? I would think my first few songs would be remote control...as I'm not prolific enough to write a whole batch and make it worth my trip.BTW, I'm all for donating tracks to each other here on the forum while songs shape up, but sooner or later it looks like serious country is best cut by the pros. My dad's been a carded musician his whole life, including his Nashville sessions in the 60s. I don't see anything wrong with great musicians being paid for their contribution!

[jay10music]

Hey Devin,I dont know about all studios, but my studio does 2 demo sessions a week. Those sessions are comprised of 6 songs per session. Alot sessions are 6 songs from 6 different writers, some are all one writer, some writers do a 3 song package deal because they get a price break...it just depends on how many songs a particular writer wants to demo that week, ya know?I do recommend that a writer start with ONE song when first conducting business with a studio. That way if you dont like wha tthe studio did, you didnt invest alot of money on the frontside of it.If you co-write a song, the rule of thumb here in Nashville is since you only own half the song, you only pay half the cost of producing the demo, the cowriter is responsible for the other half. If three writers, its paid in thirds, etc and so on.Many studios here work with out of town writers (mail ins is what we call them). The writer sends in a worktape, we chart it , track it and have the singer sing it, mix it and send it back to you. Its common place. Jimi

[devin]

Great info, thanks Jimi! This thread is proving to be very educational...and (as always), each good answer spurs a few more questions. I'll contain myself to just two more questions right now, if you don't mind:1. I'm guessing if I left a few instrumental holes in my worktape (not too many depending on the genre, obviously), the musicians could ad-lib a bit to fill the song out? For country as an example (the genre I'm the most interested in exploring, but least qualified to do myself), I wouldn't be looking for a huge 32 barre solo...but a couple of licks inbetween the major lyric areas would fit the style.2. Can individual bed tracks be sent back to the client as well...or is it just a master stereo file that is the product? As a fledgling engineer/producer, it would be useful to play with the raw material too. I might want to carve out some sonic space for that perfect banjo solo I've been working on.... Thanks again for your time!

[jay10music]

sure thing.1. In nashville it is just assumed that the players have some space to be creative on the track, so the answer to your question is yes, absolutely.2. Most studios will charge you a small fee to burn the session to a dvd. My studio uses protools hd. So we sometimes burn a protools dvd file or some other media if thats desired.Jimi

[devin]

Awesome info...thanks!

[jay10music]

anytime...

[ontariolightning]

Just a little 411 for the future, Nashville doesn't want ballads especially they don't want them from new people, thats what I was told by nashville songwriters and publishers anyways, they need uptempo, you can eliminate most of the competition if you write uptempos you might have known that alreadt but just making sure you knew, you should get those done at demo studios yesI have a list of demo studios here too, they arehttp://www.gcmusic1.com/index.htmlhttp://www.n ... group.com/ (has #1's! but is expensive)http://hometown.aol.com/decodemos/myhom ... iness.html

[cameron]

Good info, Ontario... thanks!Cameron