Bedroom DJ's! How to make your first DJ Demo CD: The Basics

So this topic is pretty important to all of us who are sitting in the trenches of DJ land as chronic bedroom DJ's . You've acquired mad skills so now its time to get out there and really show everyone what you are capable of! But how? By creating a demo of course! 

It may sound a little ridiculous have to make a demo in this day and age with the advent of Soundcloud and other such applications. It seems it would be easier to just hand out business cards with links to your social media connections plastered all over them. Wrong. The demo CD is still the dominant way of actually getting your music out to the people who will actually give you a shot. People who generally don't have a lot of time. I am going to go through some tips on how to make a demo; what works and what doesn't, and how to get ahead in this crazy market. 

What is a Demo?

A demo is basically an example of your mixing abilities and your style of music. For different venues and clubs you may have to make different demos, depending on the kind of music they are looking for. So you wouldn't make a hard dance demo for a lounge or a small bar. I think one of the hardest decisions DJ's have to make is this thing about finding your unique sound. Now this takes years of development so don't expect to find a sound right away and stick with it for the rest of your career. With regards to your demo, make sure it represents what the client wants with a touch of what you want. You just want to get your foot in the door at this point. 

How to Select Your Tracks

    Now, since a demo is supposed to represent your skills at their best, its better to plan the whole thing out; it's not something that you can just wing. When selecting your tracks, choose music that  POPS. You want to get their attention right away with a good pumping track ; otherwise they'll get bored and not listen to the rest of it. However don't make it too big or else you may have trouble maintaining that same energy throughout the mix.  The typical DJ set starts off with a good positive vibe, builds up until the mid-point where you will drop the massive track, and begin to tone it down from there- just like a triangle. Feel free to be creative, and use special effects and audio clips and anythings that will make your demo unique. Make sure you remain consistent throughout the entire demo and remember that your main goal is to display your mixing abilities. Make sure that you pick tracks that have the same mood or feel to them especially if you want to throw down different genres like techno, electro, progressive etc. Make sure you can tell the difference between these and stay with the theme you've chosen. 

Planning and Note Taking 

    After you've made a list of tracks that fit within 70-80 minutes ( the typical length of a CD) you need to sit down and start listening to tracks to figure out what tracks will go best together. Again, you can't wing this - it has to be perfect! Play around with what you have- figure out what tracks will mix and ones that won't. Write down the timing of when you will uses fades and effects or introduce certain samples. Writing it all down will help you out when recording because it will get rid of the guesswork and prevent you from wasting your time. Imagine messing it up at 56 minutes and having to start over! When you spin live- you will be more familiar with the tracks, so it works in both ways; you'll have a nice crisp demo, and you'll know the tracks inside out. After it's all planned out - record! (This is a section that I will be covering in another post )

Editing + Packaging your Demo

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    Okay. So finally the recording is done and it sounds perfect! Now you have the opportunity to edit. You can do anything you want here. You'll have to master the CD and make sure the volume is consistent. You also have the opportunity to add more effects if you like or even , if you have some experience, try some multi-track recording. You can be as fancy as you like. You'll want to convert the file into mp3 format so that you can share it online. There are many programs you can use to edit your music for free but it all depends what platform you're using. 

    After you have completed editing and your product is ready, you have to make it attractive and eye catching, especially when uploading the mix online. Make sure you tag its as "PROMO" or "for promotional use only".  Along with this you need to make a cue sheet and a properly formatted track list that will come along with the package.  A good tip for your CD demo version is to make sure you split up the tracks. Since managers and promoters don't have a ton of time, they will most likely skip through the CD, and splitting the tracks will make it much easier for them. for this reason you need to make a cue sheet; which looks like this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_sheet_(computing)

In the next tutorial I'll be going over the actual aspect of promoting your demo and networking within the industry in order to succeed in landing a sweet gig. 

Stay Tuned!!

If you have and questions or would like more details please feel free to email me at ashae.belushi@gmail.com