Over the past 10 years, this process has changed dramatically, driven by universal access to high-quality, low-cost technologies and greatly expanded song markets and marketing avenues. At the heart of these three phenomena are two vital tools: the personal computer and the Internet.

As a result, today's process for producing and pitching demos looks like this:

Songwriters emerge from a writing session with an MP3 of a reference recording most likely recorded using GarageBand on one of the songwriters' MacBook laptops. The GarageBand tracks might very well be the starting or "pre-production" tracks for the full demo.

The songwriters e-mail the MP3 to their publisher, but while awaiting feedback they start promoting the song themselves through e-mail and cell phone, social networking sites, online pitching services and myriad other outlets. Whether the publisher pays for it or not, the full demo will probably be tracked, overdubbed, mixed and mastered overtime by a variety of people in different locations, most likely starting with the songwriters' home studios. In addition to producers, A&R reps and artists on Music Row, film and TV music supervisors, music libraries, small independent labels and countless other artists will likely also be pitched -- not just in the United States, but all over the world -- via the Internet.

Here's a sampling of just some of the new demo-related resources that have become available to everyone, from DIY entities to the established, traditional music-industry giants.

Infrastructure and Communication
Laptops and the Internet are ubiquitous in most contemporary songwriting sessions. Nashville-based songwriter Victoria Banks, whose credits include Sara Evans' "Saints & Angels" and Jessica Simpson's "Come On Over" and "Remember That," says that she and virtually every co-writer she works with brings an Apple MacBook to every writing appointment. If they happen to be in different cities while co-writing, they'll run Skype's free audio/video conferencing software to see and hear each other in real time. They also often use the Internet to access online rhyming dictionaries and thesauri. "I get really aggravated if there's no Wi-Fi available," Banks quipped.

Other writers use the MasterWriter program for near-rhymes, cultural idioms, basic recording and other songwriter-specific features. Some use apps on their smartphones, such as Sonoma Wire Works' StudioTracks multi-track audio recording program, to capture musical ideas and create work versions.

To share larger, full-resolution audio files with her co-writers as well as recording studios and other parties, Banks uses Internet-based file-transfer services, including www.YouSendIt.com. Most of these services offer a free option that allows transfer of individual files up to 100MB and a limited number of downloads. Paid options allow for much larger files -- for example, up to 2GB -- as well as more downloads, longer storage time and file-delivery features.

In addition to e-mailing MP3s, many modern songwriters use multiple social networking sites to pitch their songs. Banks regularly uploads her demos to her Facebook and MySpace sites, which she refers to as "business cards that play music at you." She finds them to be a convenient place to send potential clients because they can hear her songs instantly, in part because Banks uses iTunes to organize them by style, tempo, male/female vocal and other criteria.

Music Production
Nowhere is affordable, high-quality technology more readily available than in music recording and production. In addition to GarageBand, which is Mac-only, numerous recording programs that run on Mac, Windows and Linux, such as Audacity from www.SourceForge.net, are available for free. Today's versions of Apple's Logic, Cakewalk's SONAR, MOTU's Digital Performer and Steinberg's Cubase provide unrivaled power and sound quality to home-demo recordists and professional studios alike.

In addition to loops and beats that facilitate both song creation and song recording, one of the biggest advancements in sonic quality in recent years has been among effects plug-ins and sampled "virtual instruments." Besides pristine-sounding reverbs, pianos, organs, guitars, basses, horns and strings, users can access high-quality, real sounds of everything from banjos, didgeridoos and exotic Indian drums to full orchestras and choirs recorded in some of the most acoustically perfect spaces on the planet.

Remote Tracks
The Internet is also bursting with sites that specialize in providing remotely-recorded tracks from professional session players. Looking for a real string section to add to your demo? Just click on www.TimLorsch.com and check out samples from this Nashville-based musician. How about top-notch drums? Visit www.DrumsOnDemand.com or www.DrummerWavs.com. Need killer guitar tracks? Go to www.CustomGuitarTracks.com. What about a great demo singer in any musical style? Visit www.DemoSinger.com. And for a little bit of everything, there's www.eSession.com. This type of collaborative tracking and overdubbing has become so popular that even the Nashville local of the American Federation of Musicians has bought into the idea by creating a very progressive, affordable, sliding-rate scale specifically for tracks recorded over the Internet. (This scale has been cleared for use nationwide as well as Nashville.)

At Your Service
Some people just aren't comfortable with, or don't want to bother with, the technical or logistical details of recording a demo. No problem. There are thousands of studios and music producers online, ranging from one-man-band operations to large, well-known commercial recording facilities, that specialize in managing high-quality, affordable song demo projects. In fact, if there's any piece lacking in one's arsenal of demo production resources, from custom beat creation through mixing and mastering, you can be sure it's available remotely via the Internet for a very reasonable price.

Being There
One intriguing, technology-driven phenomenon in recent years is the shift from traditional "mail-in" demos to what Michael Laskow, CEO of the independent A&R service TAXI, refers to as "phone-in" demos. With the advent of cheap or free real-time audio and video conferencing over the Internet, demo clients can now be "present" at a demo session no matter where they're located, hearing everything as it happens and providing immediate feedback to the demo producer and musicians.

Producer Cliff Goldmacher uses this kind of technology to produce demo sessions at his Nashville studio -- in real time -- from his second studio facility in New York City via his Web site www.NashvilleStudioLive.com. "I live in New York, but with this setup I can work with clients all over the world who write Country songs and want to demo them with the session musicians and singers who do this every day," he explained.

It All Ends with the Song
So does universal access to these great tools result in better demos? Not necessarily, according to songwriter Sara Light. As a co-founder of www.SongU.com, a songwriting education site offering online courses, feedback, mentoring and pitching opportunities, she believes that while the sonic and production quality of demos -- especially home-produced demos -- continues to improve steadily, the rate of improvement in song quality and music business knowledge isn't happening at the same pace. In her view, it's a given that today's demos must be "master" or "broadcast" quality, but no matter how much technology one throws at a demo, it won't help if the song isn't up to par or the person pitching the demo doesn't know how the publishing business works.

Luckily, anyone who wants to learn to write, record and promote their songs more effectively can find that information online. "There's no excuse anymore for anyone to say 'I didn't know, I didn't understand,' because you can find everything you need by sitting down in front of your computer to research and discover," Light insisted.

"I think it's still about the song," Laskow of TAXI concurred. "If anything, we've now come full circle, where people have relied too much on the technology and the ready availability of A-list session players and thinking that that's going to carry the song, when it really boils down to the same thing that it always has, which is that the song has to be great -- 'good' isn't good enough."

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

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