Here's One We Made Earlier

THE DEMO tape is many things; it's something you can casually admire in front of your dead jealous friends, or something you can use to persuade your mother that all those G chords turned up to 11 have finally paid off, or something that doubles as an original stocking-filler come Christmas time. It's also the primary means of getting a record deal.
Your demo is what you use to tell the world, more specifically the contract-toting portion, that *This is us, this is what we do, you need us.* There are two things you have to do; put three great songs down and let everyone know how great they are. It sounds straightforward, but so many talented acts fall at this early hurdle, due to inexperience or lack of advice or lack of cop-on.
So there follows a simple, brief guide in making the most of your three songs - and hence, starting the slide down into the cesspool of drugs, depravity, nubile nymphettes and rainforest-saving rhetoric that is rock stardom. Let's go!

REHEARSAL TIME
What, pray tell, is the most common mistake that bands turning up at a studio to record a demo make?
Let's ask Chris O'Brien, the experienced and acclaimed producer of the likes of Something Happens(!), Hothouse Flowers, Quireboys and The Revenants. Well? *They're under-rehearsed,* says Chris.
Let's ask Pete Holidai, ex-Radiator, ex-Engine Alley manager and producer of a multitude of bands including The Joys and Candy Apple Red. *They've had no rehearsal, they don't know what they want to get from the session,* says Pete.
Let's ask Paul Redmond of Tunnel Studios, which has played host to Engine Alley, The Tulips, Shaine and Eleanor McEvoy (who recorded *A Woman's Heart* there for the first time). *No pre-production,* says Paul simply. The more perceptive among you may have spotted a pattern emerging.
So does Chris O'Brien often work with bands who are - studio-wise - totally clueless? *Yeah, even signed ones! They forget to bring guitar strings, they don't even have tuners, they don't know the song, they don't listen to each other, they don't know what the singer's doing. You can get a guitarist saying to his drummer, 'I've never heard you do that before' and the drummer goes, 'I've been doing that for two years.' (Laughs).*
*Timing is the biggest time-waster,* says Paul Redmond. *The bass and drums are the basis of each track. Timing is everything! Timing and tuning of the drums must be perfect. You won't get away in the studio with what you do live, when you can't hear anything anyway. It takes at least an hour to set up the drum kit, it's eight to ten individual instruments, and all the while you're setting it up the clock is ticking and you're losing money because of inexperience.*
If pre-production is the answer to every first-time studio user's prayer, then what precisely should they do to pre-produce?
Chris: *Bring a good drumkit, beg, steal or borrow some reasonable equipment because a good studio will show up the limitations of poor equipment. Buy new drumskins, don't bring all your mates to watch and if you want to drink lots of beer, go to a nightclub, it's cheaper. Record yourselves on a ghetto-blaster first to hear what you sound like, because you've probably never listened before.*
Pete: *Most of the work is done in the rehearsal room. The producer should be with the band there to get to know what they're about and to bring the right attitude, to teach them about the joys of recording . . . if a band go in to do a demo, they will let mistakes go, but if they go in to record some songs, that's much closer to what the record companies want to hear.*
STUDIOLAND
You're the next Next Big Thing, you're straight outta the garage, you've scraped together your couple of hundred quid, you want to hire a studio. Where to?
*If they're booking into Windmill Lane, they shouldn't be in a band 'cos they've got enough money already!* observes Chris O'Brien. *For a first demo you should use an 8-track or a 16-track, places like Sun Studios where you can do singles and demos. Or since recently, you can record in Temple Lane Sound Training Centre, you get six or seven hours for thirty quid or so. You use a trainee engineer, so you're sort of a guinea pig, but you get a cheap demo and if you cock up it's only thirty quid rather than two hundred. And it's totally different from live, so it's a good introduction to recording.*
The most important factor that Pete Holidai takes into account when choosing a studio is the attitude of the people who work there. *There are differing attitudes to young bands in different studios, to giving them reduced rates etc. You have to remember that, for as long as you hire the studio, it's yours. Some studios make you think you're lucky to be there, but people like Al Cowan in Sonic and Pat Dunne in Sun are patient with young bands and are still professional. They've done a lot to help young bands.
*The number of tracks you need depends on the nature of the band,* Pete adds. *If you're a hot rock combo, go for a 16-track, as long as you use the extra tracks well by multitracking vocals, getting a bigger sound 4-tracks and 8-tracks are fine if the structure of the song is sound. They're all there to be used as part of the learning experience.*
Chris O'Brien agrees: *Swamp Shack have a new demo, recorded on 4-track, and it's great stuff! But if you're using 4-track, you should use a drum machine and simplify the arrangement, and do this before you reach the studio.*
So how about home recording? Is that viable for a professional demo? *Yeah,* says Chris. *If you have the songs. The Revenants' album was recorded at home and in the rehearsaLl room, just to show it could be done, and it's doing really well. I recorded the first Hothouse Flowers demo in one of their front porches.*
Perhaps the most hazardous aspect of studio work is the danger of being trampled to death by the band, stampeding towards the desk to turn their own instruments up in the mix. One of the jobs of the producer is to tell them to stampede right on back to their instruments and let him worry about all that technical stuff. He has other functions also.
*You do need a producer, as well as an engineer,* says Paul Redmond. *An engineer will double up as a producer if asked, but you have to be careful that you come out with your own sound and not the studio's sound. Go to the record company (for whom you're recording the demo) and find out who they use, then go to that producer and ask him to work with you. He knows what the record company needs. You also have a better chance of getting your tape listened to if a name producer worked on it.*
Engineers come with the studio, producers are extra, and most bands can't afford both. Pete insists that, *You need lots of production because of all the competition. It's not 'only a demo', the producer brings in the attitude that this should be good enough to be heard and that, fifteen years on, the band should be able to be proud of it. His or her job is to give the band as hard a time as possible. They can take it, it's for their own good. Their demo directly affects their career, not the producer's, who can walk away.*
The green shoots of economic recovery may well be sprouting, but even if they were full-grown oak trees, your average young band would inevitably be broke, having spent their money on pedals, synths, platinum-plated plectrums and the like. So it's no doubt tempting for them to book as little studio time as possible, knock out their three songs and toddle off home. It won't work, guys.
*A band with lots of rehearsal behind them would need three days to record three songs and then a day and a half or so mixing,* according to Pete.
*I once did twenty songs in four days with A House, but they knew what they wanted,* adds Chris, *three twelve to fourteen-hour days would be normal.*
Tunnel is among the most competitive studios - it's run, as Paul Redmond says, *by musicians, for musicians, and all profits go back into buying new equipment* - but even so, for a full 36 hours in any decent studio, a daunting amount of cash is required.
Still, when you consider the Porsches and supermodel girlfriends which await you when your demoing days are over, it's money well spent.
COPY CATS
*We get tapes sent in with no names on them, no song titles, no contact numbers, nothing. Then the band rings up and asks us why didn't we play their tape. We ask what it's called, we search for it, but we can't find it without a label!* says Ed Darragh,who produces Moloney After Midnight, and occasionally The Fanning Show, on 2FM.
It does seem a tad wasteful to spend several years' pocket money on three days in a 16-track studio only to send off your tape and not tell anyone who you are or what your songs are called. Good packaging is vital when 80-90% of demos don't even get a listen, according to Paddy Prendergast the Irish-born founder of A to Z Music Services in London. But what does he mean by *good packaging*?
*Contact numbers, a photo,* he says. *We have to see what the artist looks like.* Ed: *You should label all sides so you can see the name from the sides and back and front and inside also. You need to put the names of the writers and who played - just 'Guitar - John. Bass - Mary', that kind of thing. We need the name on all sides so that however we file it we can pull it out whenever we want it.*
Sleeve design is less important than basic identification. Paddy: *The sleeve is irrelevant. You could have a lovely design but if it's in black ... white and photocopied, it'd look shite anyway. It makes no real difference.*
To get your suitably well-packaged meisterwerk distributed to everyone you have enlisted to help make you a huge pop star, you will need to make multiple copies of your tape. You could work away on your doubledeck but that would work out more than a little expensive, not to mention tedious - and the quality control would be non-existent. And why bother when you have the likes of A to Z, Apex Duplication, Trend Studios and Dublin Tape Services to do the job for you.
*The optimum number of copies is,* says Paddy Prendergast, *as few as possible, but the usual minimum is 500 (tapes, DATs, CDs). The shorter the run, the higher the cost per unit.* Apex will run as few as 50, which would probably cover nearly all bases and leave slightly fewer spare copies clogging up your bedroom, but they only do standard cassette tapes, which won't get played on the radio, not even on the Fanning show (*Bands who use DAT are a bit more serious,* says Ed Darragh).
Trend Studios do tapes, DATs and CDs. DATs cost about #11 a shot and CDs are even steeper but if it's what's required to get you on the radio, then it's the way bands need to start thinking.
USEFUL TARGETS
OK, so you're out of the studio, your nice shiny three songs have been put on tape and will remain there for ever. There are hours, if not days, of fun to be had from sitting at home listening to your lovingly crafted demo but if you are more ambitious or less narcissistic, you may wish some people outside your immediate family to hear it also.
This where A...R people and the media come in. So how do you get these gullible fools to become pawns in your plot to become the greatest thing to hit rock'n'roll since Blancmange?
There are ways and means of getting A...R interest, and making two hundred copies of your tape and bombarding every label from Sony to Setanta to Sarah with it is not among them. Pete Holidai again: *Don't blanket-post it. Send it to two or three companies, make them take notice . . . Know what the band are trying to achieve, identify the most appropriate companies and send it to the right people.*
And there are better ways of grabbing your A...R friend's attention than posting your tape in an anonymous brown envelope which may languish unheeded in the corner of the office until well into the next century: before you go out at all, make that call.
*Ring the record company, make an appointment with an A...R person. A lot of them will see you - it only takes him or her fifteen minutes to listen to a tape. The company can then see at first hand that you believe in what you're doing and they'll also have seen what you look like.*
Paddy Prendergast of A to Z also reckons that you must get in touch with the company directly: *80% to 90% of demos sent to a record company, even a small record company, don't get listened to, at least not until a month or so after they're sent. Then someone might listen to a whole load in one day and if the first ten seconds don't grab him, that's it - they just take it out of the tape machine. If you ring the company, make someone listen to your tape, ask 'What do you think of track one?', or 'What do you think of track two? - then they have to listen to it all.*
He also thinks that a record company will be far more inclined to lend a sympathetic ear to a recording that's on CD, as against tape: *When they get a CD, it's perceived that a lot of their work is already done - they have a product they can sell.*
A...R folk are, according to Pete Holidai, * . . . strange people. If they hear that you're about to be signed by someone else, they'll snap you up. If it ever gets around that you have two companies after you, you're flying.*
So how can you use this to your advantage? By spreading unsubstantiated rumours about yourselves and your major label prospects? *Absolutely. Play them off each other, get them to come to you. If they think they need you, you can make silly demands and they'll do what you ask. My Little Funhouse got Geffen A...R to come to Kilkenny, for Christ's sake!*
As well as direct manipulation of the record company, you can draw their attention to you via the music media: radio, television and press. You can of course send your tapes to our own Tara McCarthy, who will provide a sympathetic, well-balanced review, even more sympathetic if you slip her a twenty (only joking). Or to The Fanning Show, where Dave has been playing demos since the world was young.
According to Ed Darragh, an experienced demo-maker herself, having been a member of such bands as Toy With Rhythm and The Boy Scouts, *Forty demos arrive every ten to fifteen days, on average. We play nearly all of them, except those that don't fit in with the indie format of the show.*
If you don't get played on The Fanning Show it's not because your tape is being neglected: *We listen to everything. Dave and I differ on which track to play and then he chooses, 'cos he's older and bigger but nearly everything we get is of a really high standard.*
And if you listen every night and still fail to hear your tape being played? *Ring the show, tell us, then wait for a few weeks and if you still haven't been played, ring us again. If there's still no response, then it's time to make a better demo.*
Irish bands have one advantage over British or American bands. *You can get on telly on the strength of a demo. That won't happen anywhere else,* says Chris O'Brien. But if you're really ambitious, an appearance on Jo-Maxi won't be the burning ambition that keeps you lying awake at night and makes your little heart go pitter-patter every time you think of it. No sirree bob, you want fame, you wanna live forever, you're gonna learn how to fly, you're gonna see yourself in the inkies.
Peter Holidai: *If you send a demo to the British press you're competing with every other band in the world, not just the local bands. The way to get press is to pick a journalist, ring him or her - they'll usually come to the phone - and say, 'I really like the way you write and I think you'll like my band', pass on your tape, and soon word of mouth will start and they'll be ringing you.* And knowing the British music press they won't hold back on the five-syllable superlatives, at least until the backlash kicks in.
Paddy Prendergast recommends the same approach. *For every one demo to a record company, you should send five to the press. You'll be talked about and they'll come to your gigs,* he says.
He also recommends sending your demo to Radio One, where indie faves Mark Goodier and John Peel will play it, if - and it's a big if - it's on CD.
VIDEO GAMES
*Put it this way,* says Paul Redmond of Tunnel, *everything's going video demo now. It's like Richard Branson said: 'Image, originality and talent in that order'. It's a sick business, it really is.*
Not everyone would be so cynical about video. Either way, if you want the best, look no further than Dreamchaser Productions, who've worked extensively with U2 and are responsible for the entire, complicated, wonderful Zoo TV spectacle on the Zooropa tour. Ned O'Hanlon, who worked with Windmill Lane in the past, is the Dreamchaser boss and executive producer on Zoo TV, while Maurice Linnane is the director. Dreamchaser have also worked with Tom Waits and do Féile TV, as well as other major live video gigs including Neil Young at Slane, and also make TV documentaries.
With Liam Cabot, formerly of Emdee Productions also on board, members of Dreamchaser, individually and collectively have been involved in a huge range of pop videos, having worked with U2, Bon Jovi, David Bowie, The Cure and Clannad as well as Irish rock acts like The Golden Horde, The Frames, Engine Alley and Black Velvet Band, among others.
Gerry Murphy, of Fisher Video, director of videos for Blue in Heaven, Cactus World News and Flex and the Fast Weather, among others, has seen a huge jump in the numbers of video demos being made, although he hasn't made one himself for a few years. *If you charge a band #250 or #300 for a two-day shoot, you end up making a loss,* he reflects.
The purpose of video demos is, according to Gerry, *Exclusively A...R, not for broadcast. Up to recently you couldn't get on telly because of the Unions and because RTE didn't accept the VHS or Hi-8 formats. You bring them personally to record companies (multiple copies for posting are expensive). The record company can see the band live without going to a gig.*
But aren't there some bands who would be best advised to stay at least forty paces away from any camera of any description? Not all bands are hugely photogenic.
*Not all bands are ready for a professional video, but all bands should get a friend to film a gig with a Camcorder and send that away. A video isn't a substitute for an audio demo, you need the audio sound to edit the video with. Neither is it the panacea to all of a band's problems. It won't get you signed on the spot but it helps, and it's a handy introduction to technology you'll meet later on.*
Paul Redmond disagrees with Gerry that all video demos are exclusively for A...R. The Perfect Strangers, who have *lived in Tunnel for five years* had the video for their demo *Transmission* shown by MTV, the kind of breakthrough we should be applauding, dead radio star or no dead radio star!
EXEUNT CAST
Whether you are making your demo to impress that person you've always secretly fancied or whether it's actually the first step in a World Domination Enterprise, good luck. As Ed Darragh says, *I can't say that I've made the money I've spent on my (forty-plus) demos back, but the experience is invaluable to me now, and if you get involved in music at all later on, all the hard work and lost money is worth it in the end.*
And it is a struggle. As Ed Darragh also says, *You need a neck like a jockey's bollocks.* With that pleasant thought lingering, it only remains for me to say: Happy Demoing.

STUDIO SOUND STORE is the latest addition to the Dublin music retail scene. The obvious question is: do we really need another music shop?
"Well, yes," says Jim Meath, "because S.S.S. specialize in the area of midi and recording technology. Until the advent of S.S.S. this type of equipment was never really catered for properly. Some stores did some of it well, others did lots of it badly, but nobody was getting it right until now!
"We stay in touch with our customers by mail and phone," he adds, "keeping them up to date on the latest developments in their chosen field. Whether it's digital recording, sampling, computer software or the coolest tricks to pull with a four track portastudio, it's at the end of the phone line.
"S.S.S. don't sell drums, guitars or Peruvian nose flutes! That's what everyone else does. But if you want to check out a multitrack, or test drive a pair of monitors (without the trainee psychopath with the wah-wah pedal!) then this is the place.
"And incidentally, we also boast the best audio service department in the country."