Stripped-down demos

[writeontime]

I recently read an article in one of Taxi's email updates that encouraged songwriters to submit very basic demos. I thought demos had to be fully produced in order to be competitive these days. Have any of you gotten "forwards" with simple guitar/vocal or keyboard/vocal demos? Thanks. Larry

[prinefan]

You'd probably get more responses if you ask this on a more trafficked forum like Gen. hangout or peer to peer.

My 2 cents about stripped down demo's is this; (and likely at odds with most other members here) If your song is good enough it will get forwarded. Can you imagine "the gambler" or well, "Imagine" not getting forwarded just because they're stripped down?

Would a great song get forwarded more if done up proper with a nice demo? -yes

I have VERY little money so I submit stripped down demo's and almost all of them are returned. However, the few that make it past the screeners, despite my poor home recording abilities, get placed in the "someday we I got some money to spend..." column.

All the best.

[mojobone]

Stripped down demos are fine, but the performance and the emotion have to be there; there's no place to hide. (the demo for Rascal Flatts' Here Comes Goodbye was actually better than the record, if that tells you anything) This may hold a bit truer for ballads than for booty dance-pop. They're maybe more appropriate to artist pitches, where the bar is far higher than for film/TV, though very simple arrangements are often used there, too. So yes, simple arrangements do get forwarded, even signed. Here's one by Taxi member Bob Mete: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhkEC8Cs9bA