Demo for gigging

[Magnet182]

Okay, I'm talking strictly a demo to go with our band's promo pack that will be sent to clubs/bars/venues to try to book shows... How good of quality should it be?? Is it okay to have it be a live recording?? I would think it being live would be a good thing, since that's what we will be doing at these places, playing live. We have a pretty good recording from a video tape of a show we played. The sound and mix of the band is surprisingly good. Everythings clear and levels are good. I'm thinking about tranferring the sound from the video onto cd's for the demo. I've got all the software to edit the songs into seperate tracks and everything. Just wondering if this would be good or not??

[Kingnome]

Can you hear the crowd whooping it up, or are there cricket noises between the songs?

 

Cash register "cha-ching"s are also good sounds to add if you can.

 

All club owners and booking agents are direct decendents of

Mr. Crabs-- "Money, money, money, money, money !!!"

[Stoned Zim]

We've never been really happy with our live recordings, and we've done about 6 of them now. No matter what they sound kind of muddy when played through a regular stereo, although they tend to sound better with headphones.

 

Notwithstanding that, we've used them to get gigs, and it's worked. We just pick the best and cleanest of the bunch.

 

This summer we decided to rent some studio time to get 5 of our most "sellable" songs onto CD. To save money, we recorded the instruments all at once except for the horns, which along with the vocals we're going to add in a couple of weeks.

 

The most striking thing is the drums. They sound much better in the studio. Of course, they had about 10 mics on them, where we use zero to two of them live.

[EngineGuitarist]

as long as its clear it should be fine for getting gigs. most club owners care about how good the band is(even of only for money), not if they have a really great recording. i wouldn't send a live demo to any one else though (ie. band review). At a show the club owner or manager has their sound guy who makes the sound good while you play. this has nothing to do with anything on tape or CD. some places (like CBGB's for example) have auditions for bands to play once a week. that way you don't need anykind of recording to get a show there. Unless you're from nowhere near NYC, but then of course you'd be touring and if you are, you better have a CD.

[Scheming Demon]

I've done very inexpensive (almost live in the) studio recordings which worked very well. But for bar gigs you can get away with a basement tape as long as you can hear everything.

 

Almost all bar/clubs I've come in contact with don't care about the quality of demo recording. What they care about is that you can guarantee X number of people coming through the door.

 

But for those bar/clubs that demand a demo, high quality is not a concern. If you've got a decent crowd response on the video I would think the video itself would be the best thing to give a booker.

[MoosBros]

the current trend these days is that more and more clubs are requiring a video as a part of the press kit they recieve for booking gigs.....

 

as far as audio quality goes,,, if you record live, and mic and mix everything directly to a DAT or something, you wind up with good quality sound that can be reproduced on CD's.

 

you can even have the digital audio sync'd to the video, but,, that is best left to a proffessional production company..

 

you can, however,, use the tape outs of your live board,, and input that into the audio in on a video recorder, and MUCH improve upon the sound quality of the video....