Recording a demo

[JaneBass1]

Could somebody please explain me the process of recording a demo?

I am trying to get a quote, but $120 per hour c'mon, are you crazy, you are not a lawyer!

Can you give some guidelines or some links, I feel like really stupid when they talk about mastering and stuff like that, and then I feel like I am being ripped off.

What are the usual prices of making a demo?

Thanks

[4stringrob]

Maybe you live in a larger city where demand exceeds the number of studios available, or you are calling some very high end studios, but I've seen a lot of smaller studios charge $40 - $65 per hour in various cities and states. Good luck,

[b to g is yummy]

Hey
I'm from Ontario, Canada, and my band has just started recording our first studio demo, at a local home studio. We're really fortunate, he's really good, has about 8 years on his own and has worked with some names that have gone on to be pretty good (thousand foot krutch). He's cheap too! He has a demo deal for bands: 10 hours including mix time for $300.

We're planning on buying two chunks of time (20 hours, $600). We'll have to see if we want him to master them than, that's only $75 a song. So, it looks like we're be looking at $825 (if we get them mastered) for our 3 songs.

Than of course, there is the cost of getting your cd's duplicated. I'm researching that right now..

[6jase5]

That price is way too high. Flat out, not even close unless you are at a top notch studio with great engineers. $35-$50 per hour for a demo is much closer.

Try to score a package time or all-in 4 song deal and the best advice is make sure that everyone is 100% sure of their parts before you get on the clock! That and for god sakes, help the drummer get in and set up as that takes the longest.

[topper]

Local studios (central VA) seem to go for around $50-$75/hr. There was a local studio catering to higher end clients charging $200/hr. They're out of business now.

As far as the lawyers comment goes, you're right they're not lawyers, they're artists. Good ones are rare and in high demand.

Of course you don't need a master artist to make a demo. Find a cheaper home studio.

[Sandman1278]

you can do it yourself in garageband nowadays, wouldn't want to produce an album without a professional, but a demo is very logical

[Rakie]

You can easily find places that charge between $40-75 an hour.

I can also get a band and book a studio at Paramount for $500 a day. Depends on your budget... Just gotta look around.

A fellow engineer and buddy of mine charges $75 a song, to go from tracked, edited, mixed and mastered. And this guy knows what he's doing, and has really nice home studio gear that rivals the smaller local places.



The biggest thing I can tell you is have a saved copy of the ORIGINAL recordings, not mixed or Mastered, over time you may come to find you don't REALLY like how that kick is, and if he prints the plugins to save room... Too bad.

[peaveyuser]

Damn I've see studios here charge 20-30$ an hour.

Just asking usually how many hours do you need to record a demo?

[Rakie]

Originally Posted by peaveyuser

Just asking usually how many hours do you need to record a demo?

That depends on a LOT of stuff...

How long are the songs ? How many songs ? How crappy is the band ? (How many extra takes, how much editing etc etc)

it all depends...

[bassmanjones]

What are you hoping to do with this demo? Are you just making something fun to give to family and friends? Are you trying to make something to shop around to major or mid level labels for a record deal? Do you just need something decent and clear sounding for getting gigs? Do you want to sell them at gigs?

What you want to do with the demo should impact your decision. If it's for shopping a record deal then you want it polished and clean, sounding like a finished product. The label wants to really know what they're getting if they get you.

If it's to sell at shows, again, you want it nice and polished.

If it's to get gigs, then you want it passable. Decent, not crappy, but doesn't have to be something off the local record store shelf.

If it's just for fun, then either crappy, or go all out and have a great time feeling like a pro in a big studio spending some $$$.

$120 an hour for a GOOD studio with high quality and boutique outboard equipment, great isolation and great room acoustics, is not a bad price if you want to get a really good recording out of it.

As others have pointed out, however, you can get decent and passable (and sometimes GOOD if you find the right combo of engineer, equipment, location, and luck) quality from the $30/hr studios.

[bassmanjones]

Oh, and the process is you show up and play songs and someone records you.

But seriously, if you want to maximize your investment, whatever it ends up being, make sure you have your sh*t together when you walk in. You don't want to waste time working out an arrangement of a song or trying out new stuff. Don't want to B.S. around with the drummer changing his old dull heads for $70/hr. When your session starts you're paying for the time until it ends. If you futz around for three hours trying to get a good sound and working out the kinks in the tunes, bickering, etc. that's money down the drain.

When you're low on money, or at least on a budget, if you can't nail the song within two takes with a little time for punch ins, you shouldn't be paying for studio time. Think about it. Three songs, at 5 minutes each is minimum 15 minutes. If you have to take even four times for each song, there's one hour right there. Add in time for setup and teardown (yeah, you'll probably get charged for that - the studio makes money from people being in there. If you take forty minutes to set up and twenty minutes to tear down, if they don't charge you that's $x.00 the studio is losing), listening back to EACH complete take and now you're up to 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Now that you've finally got each take that you want to use for your three songs, it's unlikely that it's perfect. We all make mistakes, even hardened studio cats. Add in another 40-60 minutes for punch ins for all members to fix their major screw ups (you don't throw out a perfectly good take because the drummer missed two fills and you dropped four or five notes). Now you're at around four hours.

Do you have a singer? Usually you record vox separately to keep everything from bleeding into the vocal track and making it easier to get a nice clean vocal take. Now you've got to sing through those three songs several times each until you get good vocal takes. The engineer may have to comp your vocal tracks (that means, take the best of the singer's numerous attempts at singing a song and layer and combine them into one final seamless vocal take). If your engineer is good, comping could take 30 minutes max. If your engineer is worth the $30 an hour you're paying him, he may be too incompetant to get it right, or take a looong time to do it.

Now you've got to mix the songs - get a good balance between all the instruments, eq each instrument so they all have their own space in the music. Think of this like soundcheck at a concert except in recording it's done afterwards. Before recording they'll get levels to make sure you aren't peaking and distorting as you record, but they will get the levels just right AFTER you're done. Quickie job, 10 minutes per song (and it will probably sound like he spent 10 minutes on it too). Average, 20-30 minutes per song. Pros spend a lot more time mixing, but they're doing it on tunes that will be listened to but 50 million people, so it's got to be perfect.

Now you're probably at around 5-6 hours in the studio, maybe more if there were problems along the way, maybe less if everyone (including the engineer) nailed it on the first swipe. This is assuming your tunes are well prepared and only took a max of three times to get that "great" take, your setup and teardown time was negligible, and you nailed the vox...and the engineer mixed the songs like a freakin speed demon.