Nashville songwriters demo questions

I am a country songwriter aspiring to break into the Nashville scene, and I wonder if anyone out there with more experience in this area than I have might be able to help put me on the right path. I've read an awful lot about what the quality and content of a songwriter's demo should be, and much of it contradicts each other. Of course, you want the highest quality possible, but some say a guitar/vocal demo is sufficient while others insist you must have a full-blown production with drums, bass, etc., before you should even consider contacting publishers. also, I've read that demos bound for Nashville are to be packaged in a very speciffic way...but again, I've found different accounts of just what that way is. Can anybody help me???

Thanks in advance,

Steve, Like you said, we should always try for the best production, however, this doesn't mean tons of tracks and or affects and it doesn't mean studio quality. The publisher who insists on full blown productions for a demo are rare, the vast majority of demos in Nashville are of the same quality you'd find out here, just a decent recorded song to get the point across. I rarely submit guitar/vocals, although many people do, my demos are usually six or eight tracks, done at home and nowhere never master quality pro recordings. You can't record your demos to please everyone, so there has to be a balance, an up tempo song should have drums and bass.. Harmonies always make a demo sound better if the song calls for them. Just do your best, don't worry about trying to make it sound like the radio, just get the point across, no matter what your finished demo sounds like, you can bet every publisher in Nashville hears worse on a daily basis.

Bumper,

Do you have any of your music posted on the web anywhere? I'd be really interested in hearing some of it.

Dave Lawrence
www.soundclick.com/simonsemantic

Steve,

You'll probably continue to find different accounts because there is no one right answer. The way that works is usually the right way. If you don't previously have a relationship with a publisher, then you will want to submit demos rather than worktapes. Once you establish a relationship with a publisher, he or she may prefer work tapes so they can decide on whether or not the song warrants a demo. Until that time, you do need to present your songs well. I generally recommend for people who live out-of-town to use aNashville mail in demo service. A few that come to mind that do good work for a reasonable price ($300-$400/full demo) are Jackie Cook ('The Song Cellar', Galen Breen ('Gator Hole Recordings' and Jay Vern (Jay's Place).

As for guitar/vocal versus full demo, it just depends on the song. I have a couple of Sara's songs and mine on our SongU.com Jukebox that you can take a listen to (the link is www.SongU.com/jukebox). One is called 'Arlington' which is a simple guitar/vocal that just got cut on the new American Pride CD (with songs by artists like Billy Ray Cyrus, Lee Greenwood, etc.). They also cut the song as a simple guitar/vocal also. Interestingly enough, we had a full demo of the song, but we didn't feel like it captured the emotion of the song, so we went back and did a simple guitar/vocal and that's the one that nailed it. We also have a full demo of a song on the jukebox called 'The Box' that's been on hold a few times but not cut. The songs are 24kbps streaming, so it's not the same 'quality' as the CD quality versions obviously. But you should be able to see that there's a pretty big variation in terms of what works best for the song.

Hope that helps.

Songwriting & Music Business Info: http://www.sethjackson.net