How to Choose Songs for a Demo Tape

Video Transcript

"Hey! My name is Jerimae Yoder and I am with Expert Village. Now we are going to talk about choosing songs for your demo. I take it for granted that somebody or you in your band writes songs, writes lyrics. Now I am going to talk a little bit about how to choose your best songs. You need to know your audience number one. Everybody has a different taste. You know a guy from New York is going to have a different taste than a guy from LA. A guy from South Dakota is going to have a way different taste than a guy from Texas. So if you are a country band, you like country music then obviously you are going to focus on country songs. If you are a rock band and you've got that rock vibe, you want to immolate some sort of rock thing, you are going to have to choose lyrics that go along with that rock sound. The people that are your acquaintances or the people at work say hey man, what do you think abou6t these lyrics and what do you think about this music. Let them listen to it for a little bit. Let them just kind of chill with it. Maybe give them an impromptu concert like that so that they can see it or give them sheet of lyrics so they can see what you are writing. Always take criticism. A writer always continues to write and a good song is not just written. A good song is re-written. So take that time to go through and be really serious about man, is the song flowing good, do I have a good hook and a hook is something that grabs the person and that can be either lyrically or it can be musically. Take a listen to this song called Evidence that I wrote and the hook is in the audience. You can see in that song and the song is called Evidence. When it goes to the chorus, there's this really whoa,where is it going type of thing; that's the hook and it grabs them and brings them in. Make sure you do get other people to listen to what you are doing. Even better get in to a studio and have a producer listen to some of your lyrics and have him rip them up and give it back to you with a red marker all over them. It is the best way to learn how to write lyrically. Musically it is a taste thing. Everybody has their own taste. Just do what you do and do it well. "