The Importance of Demo Recordings
FACT: sheet music sells better when there is a recording available for the customer to listen to!
One of the best ways to turn a potential customer into a buyer is by offering them a demo recording of your arrangement or composition. This allows them to listen to your entire arrangement, determine difficulty, and assess the overall tone of the work for programming purposes. This is especially important when it comes to original compositions, but is also important for your arrangements of popular tunes. Sure, the musician knows the Beatles’“Let It Be,” but what does your arrangement sound like? A demo recording answers that question.
We recommend including a YouTube video with your product whenever you can. You could include a video of live musicians playing your music, but your video can also simply contain an audio recording over a still image, or pages of your score.
Live performance recordings
The best way to give customers a taste of your music is through a live performance recording of your work. This allows them to experience your music as performed by humans, which gives the customer major clues about the difficulty of your work. It can be easier than you think to obtain a performance recording. Here are a few ideas to try:
Ask the performing ensemble for a video and/or audio recording of their performance
Attend the performance of your work and take a video recording on your phone
Connect with an ensemble and ask for a reading session of your work at a future rehearsal
Ask your musician friends to read through your work and take a video recording, or ask them to record their parts from home for you to put together
It’s important that the recording sounds accurate to what you’ve written, but even an imperfect rehearsal recording of your music can be hugely beneficial to the customer considering your music.
MIDI recordings
There’s no shame in the MIDI game! If a live recording isn’t practical or possible right away, we strongly recommend providing at least a basic MIDI demo of your arrangements/compositions! Most composition software provides the option to export an MP3 of your finished score, which will provide a computer-generated recording of your work and we encourage the best practice of including this basic recording for all of your published titles. While it may not be the highest quality, it will provide enough information about your arrangement/composition for the customer to make an educated, informed purchase.
Adding video
Turn your MIDI recording into a YouTube video! With minimal effort using free video creation software like iMovie, Canva, or Adobe Express, you can create a video simply by combining your MP3 with a simple video or still image(s) and create an engaging demonstration of your music. Select a stock image that relates to your piece, use the album cover of the song you’ve arranged, or take one more step and insert pages of your score for the customer to follow along. Most notation software, including MuseScore, Finale, and Sibelius will create a video with the MIDI sound as an available export option.
Going the extra mile
Produce/program your arrangement! This is where we encourage you to dig into resources that work for you. Some platforms, such as Score Follower, allow you to create videos that scroll through your score and play the MIDI recording. You might also consider something like NotePerformer, which plugs-in directly to all major notation software programs and uses Artificial Intelligence to create recordings with better display of dynamics, extended techniques, and overall sound. You can also enhance your MIDI recording by turning to software like Garage Band or Logic or even ProTools for added production value. All of these platforms can elevate the quality of your recording, giving your demo a more polished, professional feel.
Examples from the ArrangeMe community
Aaron Bennett’s arrangement of “Flowers” features a follow-along score with a MIDI recording.
David Das uses a live vocal recording and preview images of the score for his arrangement of “Put Your Records On.”
Susan Staples Bell included a video that features sample pages and video demonstration of her arrangement of “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
Seb Skelly performs his arrangement of “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” on a variety of instruments.
Conclusion
No matter what path you choose for creating your demo recordings, be sure you have at least something for potential customers to listen to when you upload your titles…it very well could make the difference between getting a sale and getting passed by for another chart that the buyer can listen to!
