The hardest thing in the world is to listen to yourself but as if you were listening to someone else!

To get the most out of demos, and to improve your demos over time, you have to listen to yourself and forget it’s you. How would you feel about what you just recorded if it was someone else? Would you be a bit more critical? Would you be able to look past the satisfaction in playing it and recording it, and apply the same sort of constructive criticism to yourself that you would give the performance if it was someone else? Most of us can quickly spot the flaws in other players’ demos, but it’s harder to be as critical to ourselves.

Much of this comes from us not actually ‘listening’ to nothing but the sound coming from the speakers. Our memories of playing it, things we thought about it as we were playing, the attention we needed to divert from listening to ourselves as we played to things like remembering the words, the chords, the buttons we needed to press, it all gets in the way of hearing what’s actually recorded.

One of the things I try to do is jump cut from target CD’s, or other demos that have been well received to my latest demo. Don’t listen to the entire thing, that’s going to bring back those memories of the performance. But if you jump cut (that is, rapidly switch from one song to another using a DAW or some other program) you can often hear things clearly that longer listening tends to conceal.

Too much reverb on a vocal? Lead sounds a bit too loud? Drums buried in the mix? Solo rushing? Sometimes, these sorts of problems jump out better without the whole song distracting you. But quick cross cut comparison to pro CD’s can quickly expose a problem that isn’t hard to fix. A bit less vocal reverb, a few numbers lower on the lead volume slider, a few more on the drums volume (and that often helps with rushing all by itself!), save the new registration, do another take.

If you can find a way to listen to yourself as if it’s NOT you, it’s amazing how quickly the solutions to producing demos you’re proud of will appear….