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Without looking, I can name the only one that would matter:

1. Because they sound better than you do!

need more?

2. Because it allows you to cast a song. By this I mean genre, age, personality (which is vastly underrated as a reason) and so on.
3. Because you may need a different gender on your demo.
4. Because they bring a different flavor to the song based on their interpretation skills. Often experienced demo singers can completely change their "take" on the song if you simply ask them to do it differently.
5. Because if you allow them, they may sing it very differently than you requested and their version might bring out new and improved aspects you never considered.
6. Because they will also expose the weaknesses of the lyric when matched with your melody. When you sing it for yourself you may not even realize the flaws. Hearing someone else sing it can open your ears a great deal.

I could go on, but how did I do?

Brian

If you have no aspirations of releasing a song as performed by yourself, why would you do a demo of the song yourself? Ditto on Brian's list - most of them covered as substance thereof on the link.

Summeoyo

Sorry Gary, some glitch occurred when I tried to move Joyce's post. Not sure why it tried to move yours.

Thanks for posting, Brian

Once you have tracks, you can do whatever you need for the song. There are plenty of examples of writers doing a version with their voice, and often that is what ends up on the writer's CD. In the saga of the song "THE GAMBLER", it was pitched relentlessly with a few different demos before it started getting cut. Before it got to Kenny Rodgers, it was recorded by Bobby Bare, Charlie Pride, and several other singers of the day. And Kenny turned it down at first. It was Larry Butler, who was the Producer, that heard Don Shlitz, the writer's original demo that convinced him to cut the song on Kenny.

Today's songs are pitched in many ways. So having the options to go with a pro demo singer and yet doing your own version of a song is always one of those. Besides that, you have paid for the tracks. Why not do as many vocals on a song as it makes sense. And cuts have come about by someone singing to the original tracks.
Everything is a pitch, everything is a recording. Never know where they're going to end up.

MAB

Well,
It has been recommended to get a few opinions, (Critiques) before you get a Pro Demo done. You can post links to your songs
here and get opinions for free if you like. If you have a Pro Demo made in Nashville it may cost more than you will ever recover.
I used to be torn about a pro demo or not to have a pro demo made. At times I would send one Pro demo and a couple Guitar/Vocals to a listing. If submitting to a Producer for a named Artist the only thing that counts is if the song fits what the Artist?Producer is looking for. As far as I can tell, nobody is looking for much these days. So be frugal if you are contemplating having a Pro Demo Made. I have several I would like to have a better demo on, but can't see paying a small fortune for them. Write a Hit!

Yes, professionally recorded demos are expensive, even at the small little studios (where you don't get what you want anyways),

Session players are very expensive also; I am attempting to do the recording all myself or perhaps use someone that can help me with the arrangement for much less money. It is not worth it to spend a lot of money since the chances are slim anyone would want my songs and like a lot of songwriters you just have too many songs to record.

Now I have learned the hard way it is best to get a critique from several sources, like this forum and others. Thank you for this. I am talking with so many folks now and learning so much I can't keep track of it all

I am taking 10 hours of instruction (a crash course) from a local recording studio on Pro Tools. But I have been through almost 5 hours with this guy and we are still stuck on EQ! I think he may be trying to get another 10 hours out of me by deliberately going too slow (he knows I am not a total beginner). I think I will have to speed him along or change the direction of the instruction - the pro studios are probably hurting for business.

JaneK

PRO TOOLS is very complicated and not very intuitive. I suggest that you learn another DAW. You will be happier, less frustrated and more effective.

Martin

Here are some reasons to be careful when hiring a pro singer.

1) They can be full of themselves. The mere fact that you seek them out reinforces their view of their incredible talent and lofty stature.
2) Whatever ideas that you have about the vocal lines for you song are irrelevant. You are nothing. They are a god amongst us. They will decide.
3) They will pigeon hole your song according to how good that they think it is and deliver a product on that basis.If they decide that you are a lousy writer, then that's all that you deserve.
4) Their sound paradigm is whatever sound that they make. "Celine Dion is a phoney who uses tricks." Some folk singer actually said that to me once.

And there surely are some good ones, but good luck finding them and being able to afford them.

Martin

The two main reasons I can think of are:

1. You can't sing or play a note yourself.
2. You wrote it in the opposite gender.

A reason not to hire has already been mentioned (they may not sing it not as you want it). Pick your demo singer carefully.

Vic

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Sounds like you had terrible luck in this department. There were some excellent demo singers active on the JPF forum some years back, Heather Cowles and a few others, who were well known for being really good to work with.

#2 is sort of confusing to me...the melody is the melody, and anyone else's idea is not the melody. Unless the melody wasn't written but sort of imagined, and the demo singer was supposed to find it...if that was the case, I'd personally award them a cowrite, because the melody is half the song according to copyright, with lyrics being the other half. It's odd to me that chords don't matter to copyright law...but a lyric is not yet a song, not until a melody is composed for it, so to me, whoever composes that final melody just wrote the other half of the copyright. Of course, it's also okay to pay someone for the work and keep the credit.

Mark

My experiences come from back when I used to record songs with studio musicians here at a studio town. And my experiences with vocalists ranged from mildly disappointing to very disappointing. That was not true of drummers, pianists, steel guys and guitarists. Those experiences ranged fine to very good. So I finally gave up on vocalists, and for better or worse, learned to sing as best I could. Still working on it. It's been a nice thing. I've enjoyed working with my voice. It has limitations but I've been able to make-do in some cases.

As for melody...I don't view it as a copyright issue.
For me a typical song has , at least, two melodies. One is the instrumental melody and the other is the vocal melody. And there can be more. They are in the same key and may sound cohesive, yet independent of each other in many ways.
On two occasions, I gave vocalists a home made track of a song as a guide to what I wanted. One of them announced that she would not sing it that way, and that if she couldn't sing it her way, she would pass altogether. I said that I understood and suggested passing. One other time, a guy just ignored the vocal melody that I gave him with no announcement that there would be a change. When I said that was not what I had in mind, he became defensive and started telling me what was wrong with my POV. I paid him his $100 and blew the song off because I had no back up at the time.

None of that may make any sense to anyone else, but that's the way I see these particular issues.

All the pro Nashville singers on my old demos were top notch. Of course, you want to pick the right singer for the song, but these guys n gals depend on repeat business. They're easy to work with. The bad experiences detailed here are foreign to me.

If you don't know how to meter a lyric or write lines with prosody, you might be exposed as a total amateur in that situation. If a demo singer thinks your lines are clunky, a recording artist will sure as hell avoid your song.

What Brian and MAB said is spot on.

That concludes the issue in my mind Robert. As for me, my songs aren't any good. Always suspected that. Oh well, obtaining closure is nice.

I'm glad you were able to find some peace but my post had little to do with you. You had a lot of trouble with seasoned Nashville demo singers? More than one?

The only difficulty I ever had was on my first trip. The gal said one of my lines didn't sing right. She was correct, I rewrote it, learned a worthwhile lesson and adjusted my lyrics accordingly.

I can't speak for anyone else. It was my experience they know what they're doing. I'm talking Nashville.

Thank you for the reality check. To insult ALL demo singers because someone is too clueless to:

1. Ask for what they want in specifics
2. Acknowledge they have no idea how hey want it to go
3. Can't write down the melody or even approximate how they want it go if they can't write it down (there are many inexpensive programs and I believe some freeware stuff out there over the years to create a simple melody line, or even a simple piano note sound which also works
4. Tell someone what they are willing to pay and if they ask for more, not having the self control to say no.
5. Bother to do simple investigation about what the going rate for a demo singer, especially for an amateur who isn't doing commercial work yet, and who isn't willing to spend any of their own time to learn how things work.
6. Claim someone who makes a living being hired voluntarily by someone to sing what they want should spend it on whatever the hell they want to spend it and or blame the "spenders food choice" on them as well. Note: If someone can't afford to eat because they hired a demo singer, perhaps the problem is with the choices being made by the spender, rather than the person working for a living.
7. Realize that people work for what the market will bear. If you can get any amount you want for YOUR work, wouldn't you ask for a lot? I would. This suggests again that someone couldn't be bothered to ask anyone on a free message board how much is the going rate for a demo.
8. Blaming the worker because you have no contacts or friends you could ask because you haven't invested the time or effort into making any who might know something, or at minimum asking a collection of strangers for help and see what they offer for free which won't cut into your burger king side order of onion rings.

Brian

Martin, having never heard one of your songs nor making any comment suggesting they are good or bad, I don't see what you are basing this conclusion on? Hiring someone to do some work is the responsibility of the person doing the hiring, not the person being hired. We just got a quote from a company asking for 10K for some work around our house and small yard. When we stopped laughing, we called a well known high priced company just to see what they would say and they asked for 1.7K which was STILL more than we were willing to pay. So we said... drum roll please... NO.

Example: I am not an expert in cleaning up a GIANT tree that was cut in half by a terrible storm, nor how to re-landscape stuff that was damaged, but I was smart enough not to spend more than I had to spend to avoid doing the work myself. I got a quote today for the same work by a roaming team of people who do that type of work and it was $800. Far more in my original budget, but I suspected if they were that far under market value, perhaps I should make sure by asking for more info like if they were bonded (yes) and if they could point me to previous work they had done in the area so I could talk to the people about their experience. This is when they stopped returning my calls. Lesson learned. The cheapest offer isn't the best either. Find the REAL market cost of something, by asking 10 people/companies if needed until a clear value range has been established for work I have never done and will never do (the remain part of the tree is still 4 stories high and could hit our house or the house behind us if the wrong people cut it down). Once we know for sure what is reasonable, and we investigate each potential company to make sure they have liability coverage for accidents protecting not only the damage they might do but ALSO make sure they cover the medical needs of their employees should they be injured doing the work, then we will choose the one with the best value/proven ability to do the job. Meanwhile we are also discussing the issue on a community message page for our area to find out other people's experiences and knowledge and a lot of quality info has come in to help. (Also some bad info, which is OUR responsibility to check out before we take it).

Why would hiring a demo singer be any different of a process?

So whether someone charges too much or doesn't produce quality work examples and then does a predictably bad job or charges you above market value is 100% the fault of the buyer, not the worker.

PS: I looked at your 4 negative comments about demo singers. I have no doubt all are true. But the obvious question is, if you know this about someone, why would you ever hire them? If you did, that is on you, not the jerk. People are jerks in ALL walks of life, I avoid hiring them. If they trick me, I evaluate how I made the mistake of hiring them and I shore up my approach so I don't waste money again. I hired a drummer on a project on the condition of satisfaction guaranteed for the first hour because he couldn't demonstrate he could do the job and I initially said no, but he kept pushing, so I said, okay, if you want to prove it, here are MY terms. He took them. He gave up after 20 minutes and went home (they were my drums). Now many many years later, I would simply call any number of great drummers I know and hire them because I already know thoroughly what they can and have done because I made the effort to meet people and form a cadre of talented folks if I ever need them. You don't HAVE to hire ANYONE. Who you choose is no one's fault but your own. Did someone tell you that you should hire any of those folks? If you knew that info about them, why would you hire any of them? If you didn't hire any of them, why paint all demo singers with that same brush?

Assuming your quote and remarks are directed at me....the last sentence of my treatise is....

"And there surely are some good ones, but good luck finding them and being able to afford them."

In my case, I presented these vocalists with a recording of my best effort to sing the song that I was paying them for and one could not lower herself to it and the other lectured me on my shortcomings. The song wasnt that bad. The second vocalist, at least got in a position to claim the hundred bucks.

Houston is not a big music town so there is no where near the talent of Nashville, Branson, New Orleans, Austin, LA, or NY where stars without breaks or luck or looks are waiting tables and doing demos. I know in such highly talented places everything is surely perfect and relationships flow effortlessly. But I'm from Houston and that's not what seems to happen here. (or anywhere else)

I've been in a few bar bands over the years as a guitarist. No real talents involved, but even in those settings, vocalists who did not play anything were a pain in the azz.

I envy you all who get to live where everything is so wonderful. But, alas...that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Signed,

The little boy who stood watching the emperor.

Many Pro Demo services have Web Sites and you can listen to different singers to see if they are acceptable to do a demo for you.

Cal DiFalco & I have used Pure Vocals quite a few times: http://purevocals.org/ There are some good singers there. A little pricey, but professional to work with.

John

Brians's quote....(didnt notice this on my last post)

"PS: I looked at your 4 negative comments about demo singers. I have no doubt all are true. But the obvious question is, if you know this about someone, why would you ever hire them? If you did, that is on you, not the jerk. People are jerks in ALL walks of life, I avoid hiring them. If they trick me, I evaluate how I made the mistake of hiring them and I shore up my approach so I don't waste money again. I hired"

Brian

When I'm not being a lousy songwriter, I'm a 3rd rate architect and home-builder.

When people hire me to do architectural work for the first time, they usually don't know a lot about me. (The houses that I build, they can see and walk in). If I want their work I tell them that I can do the work. If I tell them that I can do the work and lead them to believe that I am easy to work with and they believe it...and then...I do a lousy job and treat them poorly...

That's on me, not them.

As far as evaluating and changing my approach...I figured when I first started building that I would sort through some bad subcontractors and get to all-good-ones and then this stuff would smooth out and be blissful. That has been a disappointment. In fact, after I type this I have to spend my Saturday making sure that a sub correctly installs a TPO roof, who has been a disappointment.

When I was in my 20's, a homebuilder told me that no matter how good subs seem to be, "sooner or later, any of them will fck you." I thought he was just jaded. Turns out it was good advice to get and was applicable to a broader spectrum of life.

I envy you for the methodology based bliss that you have achieved. I have been unable to achieve that in my life.

Ps...Never listened to one of my songs? As many as I've posted and you host the site? And two of them were independently suggested to you as candidates for your contest? No prob with that, but I would have figured otherwise.

Have a good morning.

Martin