Demo Quotes

I had been writing songs for other people for a while, and I made a demo and I put it on my Myspace, which Perez Hilton found and blogged about on his site. ~ Natalia Kills

To the casual observer, the Dropbox demo video looked like a normal product demonstration, but we put in about a dozen Easter eggs that were tailored for the Digg audience. References to Tay Zonday and 'Chocolate Rain' and allusions to 'Office Space' and 'XKCD.' It was a tongue-in-cheek nod to that crowd, and it kicked off a chain reaction. ~ Drew Houston

Eric Steele was strapped in and rubbing a rag over his father's 1911. Demo had brought the pistol with the rest of Steele's
gear on board the C-17. In the cockpit, the pilot pushed the throttle forward, shoving Steele back in his seat. He barely
noticed because he was thinking about the first time his father let him hold the pistol. It had felt so heavy in his hands
back then.


So much I never got to ask him.

He ran his thumb over the spot where the serial number should have been. It was silver and all traces of the file marks were
smoothed out by years of use. The pistol was one of John Moses Browning's masterpieces, the same design that the American
infantryman had carried in the Battle of Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Korea, and Vietnam. It was the only thing he had to remind
him of the father he never really knew.


Steele had made the pistol his own by modifying it to shoot 9mm, adding a threaded barrel, and installing suppressor sights,
which were taller than the factory ones. It was his gun now, and he slipped it away before taking an amphetamine tablet out
of his pocket and downing it with a sip of water. ~ Sean Parnell

Basically, every band that makes it has some dude with some sense of business. I don't know if our band would've been so successful were it not for Daniel's [Kessler] insight into how things really work. Daniel was the one who was diligently saying, "We should make a demo, send it out, play shows but not too many shows, get on shows with touring bands that are coming to New York." ~ Paul Banks

That's such a wonderful thing about the mixing process is when you write the demo or the track, [and] it sort of goes through a couple of different changes and you don't really know what tracks are going to end up working out. ~ Lizzy Plapinger

We'll set up a demo session and try to knock out eight or ten songs and make them sound as close as we can to a record with the money and time we have. ~ Shane McAnally

The truth is that trust is a gift, it's something we all can lose
So hold on, it's not where it goes, it's where it can lead you to. ~ Linkin Park

He's rigged a tiny cassette player with a small set of foam earphones to listen to demo tapes and rough mixes. Occasionally he'll hand the device to Mindy, wanting her opinion, and each time, the experience of music pouring directly against her eardrums - hers alone - is a shock that makes her eyes well up; the privacy of it, the way it transforms her surroundings into a golden montage, as if she were looking back on this lark in Africa with Lou from some distant future. ~ Jennifer Egan

Expanding further on his own observations of Prince's writing style(s) during the course of the album's recording, fellow Paisley Park engineer Eddie Miller, who engineered the recording of 'Electric Chair' among other Prince recordings during the Batman era, recalled that "he would write all sorts of ways. I have to admit that I listened to some of his cassette demos that he would sometimes bring into the studio to reference (as I remember, he would hold the cassette player up to his ear, so you couldn't really hear it.). They were fascinating. His cassette demo technique was extremely crude but ingenious - it's like something you'd do if you had no access to any equipment. He'd use two cheap cassette recorders. If he wanted to hear drums, he'd record a human beat box rhythm for the length of the song - and most likely, he'd have the form of the song in his head while he was recording this. By the way, it was the same in the studio when he'd do his one man band approach to recording a song. He'd know the song in his head, and start out recording the drums for the song (it would essentially become the 'click track' - the way a click track should be). Back to the cassette demo - he'd then play his beat box groove over the speaker on the cassette recorder and sing the bass line while recording all this onto the second cassette machine. He'd build up a rhythm track this way, and then add vocals. And there's your demo. ~ Jake Brown

My demo was terrible, I sounded like a chipmunk. I was so young. ~ Bruno Mars

I always loved singing, but I thought it was like drawing - just something you do in your own little corner to calm yourself down. But when my friend, the French songwriter Etienne Daho, listened to my songs, he was so moved that told me that I had to do a demo, share them with the world. ~ Lou Doillon

Noble again chose Larry McCarthy, the veteran media consultant who was known for his ability to distill a complicated subject into a simple, potent, and usually negative symbol. McCarthy had a reputation for being a particularly shrewd consumer of O, or opposition research on the rival candidates he was targeting. He often honed his ads using polls, focus groups, micro-targeting data, and "perception analyzers" - meters that evaluated viewers' split-second reactions to demo tapes. McCarthy ~ Jane Mayer

MTV refers to its audience as 'the demo.' Being 'in the demo' means being in the demographic sweet spot that advertisers want their programming to hit, which is ideally between 18 and 24. ~ John Seabrook

When an Occupy demo in the centre of Frankfurt makes world news, I shall hurry to join in. ~ Nigel Farage

If you put a demo on the net and people say it was the finished version then they're going to say it sucks. I really hate that. ~ David Guetta

Infinite was me trying to figure out how I wanted my rap style to be, how I wanted to sound on the mic and present myself. It was a growing stage. I felt like Infinite was like a demo that just got pressed up. ~ Eminem

If you wanna get away with murder, all you gotta do is shoot somebody in the head and put a demo tape in their pocket! "This is a rap killing. Let's go home!" ~ Chris Rock

This is me before I come undone. This is me before I fall apart. I've been tired for days and days. I've been tired for days and days. ~ Sara Quin

Drop heavy," Kaz shouted, and Wylan let loose with every rocket, flash bomb, and bit of demo he'd been able to fit into the boat. The sky above the Van Eck house exploded in an array of light, smoke, and sound as the guards dove for cover.
Kaz put his arms to work, feeling the boat slide into the current as they passed into the glittering traffic of Geldcanal.
"In and out without him ever knowing?" said Rotty. ~ Leigh Bardugo

I was on a 747 flight out of Denver with four flight attendants on the plane. One of the flight attendants got off the plane to go check someone's carry-on bag in the cargo hold, and while she was gone, the door closed and we began to taxi out. While we were giving the demo, we looked out the window of the airplane to see the flight attendant running alongside the plane in the snow, waving and yelling and trying to catch up to us. 'Did you notice that we're missing someone?' I said to the other flight attendant. 'Yes, but try to keep it low-key - there's a supervisor on board!' Well, it's hard to keep it low-key when someone is running alongside your plane, waving and screaming. The plane stopped and the air stairs went down so she could get on board, and my co-worker said, 'Tell her to try to be inconspicuous when she gets back on.' Well, she had to walk the entire length of the plane to get back to her station, and everybody on board broke into applause. ~ Betty N. Thesky

See how the questions of career choices and demo CDs and relocating diminish in the light of God's Kingdom?
Sail by the stars, not the flotsam. ~ Andrew Peterson

I have a very connected history with Bilal. I heard his demo years ago. I heard all of the magic instantly. He's a master at interpretation of song. ~ Q-Tip

Recording at home enables one to eliminate the demo stage, and the presentation stage in the studio, too. ~ Warren Zevon

We changed the name from Sex Gang Children to Culture Club because Jon Moss, our drummer, went to L.A. on holiday and took some demo tapes with him. -Everyone loved the music but nobody liked the name. I -remember getting a postcard from Jon from L.A. saying, "I don't think America's ready for the Sex Gang Children." ~ Boy George

I think the true test of a pop song, for me, and I've talked to a lot of other writers about this, is you take your demo, you pop it in your car and you drive down Sunset Blvd. to Santa Monica, and that's the Hollywood car test. ~ Ryan Tedder

I demo all of my songs on Garage Band, where I pretty much play everything - not very well, but I manage to hammer out a drum beat and a bass idea. ~ Jenny Lewis

Fun is when you're writing a song and you're trying a rough shot at a demo and ... it works. That's when it's fun. After that, it's work. ~ Tom Scholz

I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them. Finally the Foo Fighters stuff happened when I just went to the studio down the street from my house and recorded some stuff in about five or six days, and all these people wanted to release it as an album. I wanted to release it on my own, with no photos and no names on it. ~ Dave Grohl

I started writing when I was around 6. I say 'writing,' but it was really just making up stuff! I started writing and doing my own thing. I didn't really know what a demo was or anything like that, so I started getting interested in studio gear and started learning about one instrument at a time. My first instrument was an accordion. ~ Hunter Hayes

Opinions are like demo tapes. I don't want to hear yours ~ Stephen Colbert

With the TV stuff, we usually hand in final, finished tracks. The turnaround time is so tight that there's no time to demo anything; you just do it. ~ Adam Schlesinger

When I write - I always write on my own - I demo those songs on a four-track. ~ PJ Harvey

When I was in bands, I always liked the demo best. ~ Agnes Obel

I learned a long time ago to be honest when I'm talking to other artists. Up-and-coming artists used to come and say something, they would have a demo reel, and I would try to tell them the truth. I don't go up and say something unless I really feel it. ~ Common

I know I can't do everything myself. So I know I specialize in my melodies and I do some of my demo work. I pass it on to my producers who are much better at the production level. ~ Paul Taylor

I entered a songwriting competition, I didn't win, and one of the judges on the panel was an A&R man at a record label that had no other acts and I signed to them. We sent my demo out to five people and David Kahne got back to me that day, and said I think you're amazing I want to start with you tomorrow. He was like my Harvard reach school, I couldn't believe it. I was really excited. It was the first time anyone of any importance said I was good and I ran with that validation for a long time. ~ Lana Del Rey

Fear mankind most when he fights with a consuming passion for what he perceives to be true." ~ Demo Cratia. ~ Farah Evers

I tend to like to write a song and then think about it for a while. I record a demo of it and then put it away and wait until I've gotten more thoughts on it or get sure exactly how to approach it. ~ Christopher Owens

I wrote 'Lakeside View Apartment Suites' with Roman in my arms. He was about a month old. I was playing left-handed and finally handed him over. On the demo of it, you can hear him crying in the next room. ~ John Darnielle

I actually produced other people's vocals for a long time when I first signed my publishing deal and I had just sort of decided that I only wanted to be a writer. I would be in all of these writing sessions, and a lot of times my publisher would say, "You should get a demo singer to sing it because then it doesn't identify as a Solange song." ~ Solange Knowles

Your songs are good, Amanda. And I'm not just saying that. I stared at him in disbelief. I get given a lot of music, he continued. It's like that on the road, you know, we get handed mountains of demo tapes every night. And they're, you know, not always good. Your songs are good. I don't know what your plans are. But I hope you keep going. I just wanted to say that. ~ Amanda Palmer

Every demo I do has a mandolin or resonator on it - some element of the bluegrass or classic country world that I grew up listening to and that first drew me in. And then I always try to find somewhere for a bluesy guitar sound, because that's also what I love. Musically, I'm always finding my way home. ~ Hunter Hayes

I listen to everything that comes in. I'm not real worried about demo sound quality. I can hear through that sort of thing. If a band can play, then they can play. ~ Greg Ginn

Can we save the live demo for later, please? Bean Sidhe in angst, here. ~ Rachel Vincent

Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered. ~ Mick Jagger

To accuse nations (not leaders or governments) is the hallmark of the demo-nationalist of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries; it leads to endless hatreds, feelings of revenge, misunderstandings, and frictions. It is the surest guarantee for perpetual mass wars. ~ Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

I used to cold call labels and pretend I was one of their artist's attorneys. I'd say, 'This is Jay-Z's attorney, we need to speak with Craig Kallman,' you know, owner of Atlantic, and they'd say, 'Right away,' and then I'd be like, 'Please just listen to my demo tape!' ~ Benny Blanco

Iggy Pop, or should I say Iggy's people, had reached out to me saying he was a True Blood fan, and if any opportunities come up, to please keep Iggy in mind. We sent Iggy the demo of 'LB&R'. He loved it and said, 'Sign me up.' ~ Gary Calamar

I was in Studio 54 one time; it was great. But I'm not a discotheque guy. Sometimes, if I had a new demo, I went to some discotheques to check it out - see how the reactions of the people were. But just to dance, I rarely did that. ~ Giorgio Moroder

Mutineer is the first album of mine without a demo stage. ~ Warren Zevon

This was news to Mosley. He thought the system was reliable. Didn't it always seem to work when investors came to view it?
Well there was a reason it always seemed to work, Shaunak said. The image on the computer screen showing the blood flowing through the cartridge and settling into the little wells was real. But you never knew whether you were going to get a result or not. So they'd recorded a result from one of the times it worked. It was that recorded result that was displayed at the end of each demo. ~ John Carreyrou

Some people remaster their records six, seven times, remix it three, four times, spend a million hours, then they always go back and hear a demo of it and they'll say, 'Aw that sounds so much better than the final mix.' ~ Jack White

So it became in my mind a nine-carol service; an oratorio and orchestral concert all in one, but with narration. That's something I've learned about, because it's the story that keeps you in there. I wrote a libretto and I gave it to John [Du Prez, Idle's co-writer of many years]. We normally don't work in this fashion but I said off you go, and he went off for about three months. He brought me back this demo which blew my mind. ~ Eric Idle

I never record anything like a demo, I just go for it. ~ Nuno Bettencourt

I'm recording another demo for another batch of record labels that we'll shop it around to. ~ Ahmed Best