Anyone got any comments or stories about making a demo cd with your band?
We've been making a cd of the singer in our band's original material since June of 2009. He was totally unprepaired. We went in the studio with just a scratch cd of him and him banging on an out of tune acoustic and we had to build the songs from that. It's all mediocre material at best-no structure or formula-just random thoughts from his "star" mind. It was supposed to be a demo of the band to help get bookings, but turned into a cd of all his originals, with other people sitting in with instruments that the band doesn't usually carry with us. The singer is paying for everything, which justifies it a bit, other than the time spent working the material up for a cd that no one (except his friends) will buy, and no bar owner will listen to.
usually bar owner don't want to hear originals, they just want you to play the popular dance tunes that everyone knows.

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Life is like a sh*t sandwich. The more bread you have, the less sh*t you have to eat.

Aside from home recording, we recorded a lot of "live" things.

Using a Mackie Onyx 16 channel desk with the Firewire option, we use it for the house mix and feed something like 12 channels: four vocals, two guitars, keys, bass, and a slew of drum mics, plus one ambience mic to a laptop running Logic.

Someone once told me to record as many gigs as you could, because you can learn from the playbacks, and I'm a believer in that now.

edited to add that in all of the demo CDs I've done, we've put on four songs....three that everyone knows (boring) and one that shows what the band can do. That method has been successful for us.

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

I think a live recording of a gig is the best way to promote your band. Gives the bar/club owners an idea of what to expect, as far as music and responce from patrons.

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2012 American Vintage Telecaster 1958
09 Fender american deluxe strat.
97 Gibson les paul special P90's double-cut
65 Princeton reverb re-issue
2010 Guild Gad-F40e

Well for a start off you've taken the supremely expensive "rock star route". Going into the studio with a few idea's thrown down on a cd. Hardly economical is it, your paying for the time your spending discussing things and trying things.
My old band used to record a full 11 or 13 track cd in 5 days. We'd rehearse the thing till we were playing it in our sleep. Hit the studio, spend half a day setting up and setting sounds. Blast out a rough take of a all the songs on the afternoon, just like we were rehearsing them. Next day the bassist and drummer would overdub their parts, using the rough recording of the previous day as a click track. I'd go in on the 3rd day and spend the day layering the rhythm parts and multitracking solo's. Then theres 2 days free for the vocalist to do his bit. Its a bit of a strict regime but it gets a high quality recording done for under £800.
Musicians by nature are explorers. Most guitarists will want to go down every avenue available to them. When your infront of a massive desk with more effects and hardware you can shake a stick at. Most want to try it all out. I say fine, but they can pay for the days when they do that theres no reason the band should.

The other thing is promotional stuff.

No one, no A&R man, no bar owner, no gig promoter wants a 11 track cd of a band they've never heard of. They want 3 tracks at most (they'll probably only listen to the first 30seconds of each song then go back and have another listen if you've made a good impression and they have time), include a short (and I mean short) biography of the band and contact details. Phone no's, email and a website. A couple of pictures on the sleeve of the band. I also found they like something a bit eyecatching on the CD itself. So pick your 3 best songs that all your fans like the most and get them down perfectly. We ran a myspace vote so that fans could tell us what their faves were. Needless to say, they were nothing like what the band members expected. That 3 track demo is the hardest bit of work you'll ever do as a band. You need to grab peoples attention quickly, and be clear and consice with details too.

Onto promo stuff.
Now that you've got your recording done and your demo out, and your getting gigs come in. You may want to start with some give away stuff. Namely 5/6track CD's, not the full album. You want to sell that. For that I picked a wide variety of songs we played. No two similar. Use it to entice or encourage people to buy your album/tshirts/posters, whatever. Also they make nice gifts to the people who come up to you aftershow and say something like "I dont usually like this type of music, but you were really entertaining". Trust me, give that person a 5 track cheapo CD and you've made another fan.

All the best with it. Its bloody hard work.

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No no and no