VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

richvoice · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:25 pm Post subject: Demo clips

Bruce posted something earlier in a thread about demo production that I found interesting:

heyguido · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 12:59 am Post subject:

Sounds to me like you're confusing yourself over two... (no, three) different issues here.

1) Whether your gear is good enough to be competitive. Relax. It's fine. Could you spend more on better gear? Of course. Will what you have get you work? Absolutely.

2) Whether your space is sufficiently prepared to get the best from your voice and your gear. The general rule here is simple.... If you can hear your room (or your neighbors), it needs work.

3) And most important to THIS conversation.... What a producer does. A producer turns a recording into a performance. A producer knows how to tweak the audio with a smidge of this and a dab of that. A producer creates a singing, dancing scarecrow from straw and twine. A producer knows just the right shade of lipstick to make the pig a diva.

My favorite producer turned a spare room into a studio, so he could work from home. But he's got Grammys on the walls, and with good reason. His ears and his talent create award winning work, not his gear. That's what you hire a producer for. Anything else, and you're wasting your money.
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DougVox · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 6:55 am Post subject:

A couple of options that might not have been considered yet:

A) Why not record at least some (and maybe all) of the pieces
for your shiny new demo in your own space? (Director/producer could listen
in and direct during the session, if necessary.)

And yes, some subscribe to the theory that a demo should only be made up
of actually work (for the record, I don't agree), in which case it's perfectly reasonable
to think that not all of the segments would have been recorded in the same space.

cool

We all tend to overthink these things.
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Rick Riley · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 7:08 am Post subject:

I was told to NOT have them sound like they were all done in one place. If you did some gigs from your home studio and some at varying studios, then they wouldn't, and that's how most work happens.

And cool

if it's a good demo, I don't think anyone listening would ever say, 'wait a minute, those clips all sound like the same mic'. A good demo should remove the listener far away from the technical aspect it took to create it.

Don and Doug covered the rest quite well.
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yarg28 · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 7:11 am Post subject:

To me, it"s a matter of dynamics during the listening experience. Dynamics can certainly be achieved through proper track/music selection but adding a layer of hardware dynamics can really help each spot stand on its own.

My demo was produced in a studio using the same equipment for all 8 spots. The producer made a few processing adjustments to try and give a few spots some "sonic separation" and I'm really pleased with how it turned out...except for the talent part of course.

I hear many many demos that sound very flat. Similar music tracks, same exact mic sound, same eq, etc. I find them very Ben Stein.

Is it at the top of the list of things to get correct? Probably not but it should be on the list somewhere if you really want to stand out in a good way.

good luck.

Bruce · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 9:20 am Post subject:

Yarg/Gary has it right. The biggest faux pas is to have all the cuts sound the same as in sounding like you did them all in one session at a demo mill... and I've heard a fair number of those kinds of demos over the years. They give me no faith in the abilities of the voice talent.

B
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Bish · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 9:41 am Post subject:

Lee Gordon · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 9:55 am Post subject:

The whole point of the "my own studio/someone else's studio" discussion isn't about whether you should do your demo on top of the range equipment; it's about being able to deliver the goods your demo promises, both in terms of voice and performance and technical quality. As long as the output from your own studio is of good, professional technical quality, it doesn't really matter if you record everything there or in another studio or in various locations. The differences in audio quality are likely to be imperceptible to the vast majority of the people listening, most of whom are keying on your performance.

Your studio quality should be like an umpire in a baseball game: largely unnoticed unless conspicuously bad, in which case it's something you need to attend to anyway.
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Rick Riley · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 1:51 pm Post subject:

@ Lee

That's what I was trying to say...
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DougVox · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 2:36 pm Post subject:

@Lee:

That's what I was trying to say too. Thanks!
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richvoice · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:33 pm Post subject:

Good thoughts, all, thanks. Like I said, I'm really not all that concerned about it. Bruce's comment just got me thinking.
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Rich
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Bruce · Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 7:56 am Post subject: