I hate making demos
How I’m developing a complex skill and what this has to do with Substack
Not so long ago I sat down to write my first Substack post - here it is, by the way: “The Ririverse and how to make it yours”. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, I stretched myself out on the couch and thought: Time to be awesome!
An hour later - the text was there and I was feeling nothing short of exhausted. I liked how it turned out but I can’t deny I’d expected it to be an easier write. I do have the nerve to think I can turn a phrase well enough along with a pretty tall ambition to write a memoir on finding my way to music in some glorious distant future.
But I also have to admit that the last time I have committed to any form of regular prose writing was in my early twenties when I was obsessed with the idea of turning a teenage love mishap into a tragic novel (that book has actually been finished and gathers dust on my ancient Dropbox, I am very stubborn!)
So I was half-lying on the couch, contemplating how writing a newsletter on a regular basis cannot possibly be sustainable, let alone combined with my ever so demanding consultant’s reality and my ever so delusional pursuit of music. Then I glanced over to my synth - permanently on, blinking red lights all through the night, probably unhealthy for the device, but oh well - and my mind turned to the demo of a new song I was about to start.
What goes into a demo? Actually, anything - as long as it conveys the idea. It can be piano (or guitar) and voice ad-libbing the melody - you don’t even necessarily need the real lyrics at this stage. Or it can be a full theatrical piece, or it can be anything in between - whatever fits your standards.
Most of my songs don’t really work as piano-and-voice pieces. I mean, technically they could, but then they wouldn’t sound the way they do in my head. That probably makes it even more ironic that for the longest time ALL - and I mean a whopping 100% - of my demos were just that - synth chords (with an outrageously open low-pass filter) and a meek vocal line with little to no effects on it. No guitar - my playing skills were and remain pathetic. No bass - I didn’t know how to build a bass line. No beat - I definitely had no idea how to make a dozen types of kicks, thuds and bangs come together to form something cohesive.
Fleshing out a demo was (and, frankly speaking, still is) a special form out torture, especially for someone new to music arrangement. After all there’s a difference between coming up with the song idea / lyrics / chords and deciding that there’s gonna be this awesome guitar line with ping-pong delay on it at the 1:15 mark.
But, by a stroke of sheer luck, I had someone with decades of production experience by my side to bring my first ever songs to the level you’d expect from a polished indie-project. Still, deep in my soul I knew it wasn’t me who’d done it - I was the girl with shrill synths for an arrangement and should I be left alone - I’d drown in said synths and no one would ever hear the beauty of what I meant behind what I said.
And then one day, my producer friend told me: “Next time you’re making a demo, just try to play the root notes of your chords with a bass patch, one note for one chord”.
Easy enough to say and theoretically easy to do if you don’t have a phobia of adding a second track to your recording. At least the task seemed straightforward enough and in my next Ableton session I sheepishly plonked my first bass line - literally one sustained note for each chord.
But it’s the next demo after that where it gets really interesting because this time, as I finish recording the chords and the vocals, there’s a little voice in my head whispering:
“If you don’t do the bass now, this is going to be a step down from the last one”.
The voice knows I’m this easy to manipulate with imaginary regress, it knows that I’m going to obey. And I do obey, and I don’t regret it. Making a bass line slowly becomes an essential part of my process, one that I don’t question anymore. Several songs in, the notes I play and the rhythms I choose start diverging from the “sustained root note”-rule. Today I can safely say I’ve composed quite a few bass parts I wouldn’t be ashamed to put out as is.
The same story, pretty much to the “t”, happened with the concept of the beat. Same producer friend, same advice: “I can’t always understand the energy you’re going for, so next time just try to put a MIDI-kick on every click of the metronome”.
Alright, that sounded like something that could be matched by my level of capability. And so I added yet another track on the following demo - one consisting of some four hundred identical kick hits. I still remember listening back to the result right after putting that in and thinking: THAT ALMOST SOUNDS LIKE A SONG!
Unsurprisingly, I’ve never skipped the beat (ha-ha!) after that - as long as the song needs one, of course. I’d be lying if I said these things come easy to me now, but they do come easier, and faster. I am still scared - every time! - that I might create a Frankenstein’s monster of a sequence but there’s a part of me that knows: there’s an ever bigger chance it will turn out well.
I’ve come to a point where I go even further than that - I can spend unspecified periods of time selecting and tweaking different kinds of delay and reverb for my vocals, I often record more than one synth line for a demo, I arrange effects dynamically to swell and disappear in a way that punctuates the mood of the song. I am adding these little touches one at a time and it feels like I’m starting to enjoy playing with my possibilities. Slowly they start to seem exciting rather than intimidating.
So how does it tie into the whole Substack thing? Remember, this whole train of thought departed from the couch station, where I’m still lying contemplating how exhausted I feel from writing this one first newsletter. Well, suffice it to say, it would be a step down to miss next Wednesday’s post!
Reading through your posts reminded me of the early days of my creative journey—the struggles, the excitement, and the relentless pursuit of improvement. It also made me think about the many junior artists I’ve trained/mentored and the patterns I’ve seen in their journeys.
Your approach—pursuing your passion while maintaining a stable income—is a healthy one. While it naturally limits how much time you can dedicate to music, it also helps manage expectations and avoid the burnout that causes so many young artists to abandon their craft entirely. Too often, I’ve seen people throw themselves fully into the creative world, only to leave it broke, disillusioned before realizing their dreams.
Having gone all-in on my creative path for over a decade, I don’t regret my choices, but I do wonder—would I have enjoyed my craft more if I had done it purely for myself, rather than turning it into something I had to make it work at all costs? Creative passion is unpredictable, and it evolves into something completely different entirely.
People love to say, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” but they rarely mention the other side: when your passion becomes your work, you’re never off the clock. It consumes you, and if you’re not careful, it can take over your identity entirely.
That being said, take my thoughts with a grain of salt. Even after achieving everything I set out to do...and so much more...I still ask myself: Was it enough? Was the sacrifice worth it? I don't have an answer to that, and I am totally fine to change careers and do something else that I find meaningful at this stage of my life. Maybe that uncertainty is just part of the creative journey, something every artist wrestles with regularly.
Your posts allowed me to reflect on my path—thanks for sharing something so genuine and being open about the realities of the creative life.
I love how you draw parallels between your journey in music production and writing. It’s a great reminder that growth happens in small, persistent steps.