Demos

[nomorecrackpipes]

There are two Yield rough mixes out there - Pilate & Low Light. Ed's singing and both are actually Jeff songs, so I imagine a Jeff 'demo' exists (since we're parsing things here).

[stip]

Most of Riot Act:

"[A lot of] the [songs'] arrangements were only hours old a lot of the times. We'd teach each other a song in the studio, just figuring we'd demo it up to see if we wanted to do it. But then Ed came in the studio and threw a vocal on it and that was it. There were several songs that we all thought were only demos, but Ed would say, 'I just sang it, that's the take.'"

huh, see that's interesting. i've always considered a demo to be a very rough sketch of a song that's recorded independently by a member of the band, then brought to the band. once the band records it in some form, it ceases to be a demo and is then a rough mix. but i suppose it's still a demo if the band is working it out in studio and it just happens to be recorded? or, stone is just using the term 'demo' haphazardly, which is, really, what a lot of folks around here do and it get's chud's panties in a bunch.

the later, I reckon

[spike]

oh chud

[LetMeSleep]

Most of Riot Act:

"[A lot of] the [songs'] arrangements were only hours old a lot of the times. We'd teach each other a song in the studio, just figuring we'd demo it up to see if we wanted to do it. But then Ed came in the studio and threw a vocal on it and that was it. There were several songs that we all thought were only demos, but Ed would say, 'I just sang it, that's the take.'"

huh, see that's interesting. i've always considered a demo to be a very rough sketch of a song that's recorded independently by a member of the band, then brought to the band. once the band records it in some form, it ceases to be a demo and is then a rough mix. but i suppose it's still a demo if the band is working it out in studio and it just happens to be recorded? or, stone is just using the term 'demo' haphazardly, which is, really, what a lot of folks around here do and it get's chud's panties in a bunch.

Taken from another board

I think a demo is solely defined by the intent. The word demo itself is short for "demonstration," production values notwithstanding. So to me demo implies it is a pre-production, rough draft, which may or may not be revised with new elements (lyrics, melodies, accompaniment, arrangements etc.) at a later point as a newer demo, or finished product. But its really defined by the individual mostly. Have you ever heard Pete Townsend's demos'? He released 2 or 3 volumes of them called Scoop. They ranged from single mic with him on guitar or piano, singing at the same time in his living room; to fully realized versions of Who songs which he'd then present to the band members and producers to replicate. The production values were virtually the same as the albums these songs appeared on. But these are considered demos.

[Norah]

my panties are just fine, thank you very much

[Strat]

my panties are just fine, thank you very much

Who are you trying to convince?


I think "demo" can be a term that many musicians dont think much about. Many song writers will craft a song, record it and be done with it, knowing full well the song they recorded will forever be mutated, grow and change drastically whether its lyrically or in the arrangement. It's always a sketch that will forever be changing as the muse allows or some shit.

Rough mixes are i think much easier to define. This is the song. Its recorded. It has nothing to do with where the song is at but rather to do with the levels on all the instrumentation, vocals, in the finished recording. Turn that guitar up. Add some chorus to that one. Bury this vocal a bit, add some texture with some lasers. Anything prior to the finished album product.

[ItsOkay]

my panties are just fine, thank you very much

Turn that guitar up. Add some chorus to that one. Bury this vocal a bit, add some texture with some lasers. Anything prior to the finished album product.

Oh can't forget to add those lasers.

[southp]

my panties are just fine, thank you very much

Who are you trying to convince?


I think "demo" can be a term that many musicians dont think much about. Many song writers will craft a song, record it and be done with it, knowing full well the song they recorded will forever be mutated, grow and change drastically whether its lyrically or in the arrangement. It's always a sketch that will forever be changing as the muse allows or some shit.

Rough mixes are i think much easier to define. This is the song. Its recorded. It has nothing to do with where the song is at but rather to do with the levels on all the instrumentation, vocals, in the finished recording. Turn that guitar up. Add some chorus to that one. Bury this vocal a bit, add some texture with some lasers. Anything prior to the finished album product.

We, the "Pearl Jam Enthusiasts" probably take this shit too seriously when trying to label some of these tracks. To the uninitiated nube they're all demos, and for the sake of Gremmie's filing structure, they just dump everything in that bucket. I agree with pete that it's unfortunate that these mislabeled and low-bitrate files have become the primary source for PJ rarities, but it's a decent place for someone to start. Hell, we all started with 4th generation Maxells so really it's not that bad.

I think the bigger crime over at Gremmie is the lossy bootleg situation when there are plenty of good torrent sites with high quality stuff out there. This coming from a guy who used to watch hours of VHS boots that had been dubbed so many times there was no colour left on the video.

[E.H. Ruddock]

This thread...

[Mine]

I think a rough mix is the tentative final take at whatever stage before the actual final mix. Mixing is a very complex process that takes time so it makes sense to do partial mixes especially when the producer and mixing engineer aren't the same person.

[Coach]

my panties are just fine, thank you very much

Who are you trying to convince?


I think "demo" can be a term that many musicians dont think much about. Many song writers will craft a song, record it and be done with it, knowing full well the song they recorded will forever be mutated, grow and change drastically whether its lyrically or in the arrangement. It's always a sketch that will forever be changing as the muse allows or some shit.

Rough mixes are i think much easier to define. This is the song. Its recorded. It has nothing to do with where the song is at but rather to do with the levels on all the instrumentation, vocals, in the finished recording. Turn that guitar up. Add some chorus to that one. Bury this vocal a bit, add some texture with some lasers. Anything prior to the finished album product.

We, the "Pearl Jam Enthusiasts" probably take this shit too seriously when trying to label some of these tracks. To the uninitiated nube they're all demos, and for the sake of Gremmie's filing structure, they just dump everything in that bucket. I agree with pete that it's unfortunate that these mislabeled and low-bitrate files have become the primary source for PJ rarities, but it's a decent place for someone to start. Hell, we all started with 4th generation Maxells so really it's not that bad.

I think the bigger crime over at Gremmie is the lossy bootleg situation when there are plenty of good torrent sites with high quality stuff out there. This coming from a guy who used to watch hours of VHS boots that had been dubbed so many times there was no colour left on the video.

For those of us who are not very good with torrent sites (I always seem to get a virus or the upload fails), the Gremmie site is great. However, even I can understand that the audio quality sucks.

I wish that all of the good sounding, rare stuff didn't have to come from torrent sites.

I'd pay $$ to belong to a site like Gremmie, where I could download a+ sound quality via flac.

[Mine]

there may even be some blog out there that hosts them but who has the time to find it?
As for torrent sites dimeadozen is a reliable source for lossles unreleased stuff for PJ stuff there's jam-river.com

[Kevin Davis]

I guess when I started the thread I was just thinking of alternate studio takes.

[EJ]

I guess when I started the thread I was just thinking of alternate studio takes.

You mean like the alternate take for Corduroy, that has some lyrical differences?

[bodysnatcher]

I guess when I started the thread I was just thinking of alternate studio takes.

Yeah, I'm curious about this too actually. I don't wanna derail your thread, but I've always been curious in seeing a list of songs (and where to find them) that have multiple recordings... like the Even Flow single, Alone, etc... Dead Man apparently has multiple recordings?

[Norah]

my panties are just fine, thank you very much

Who are you trying to convince?


I think "demo" can be a term that many musicians dont think much about. Many song writers will craft a song, record it and be done with it, knowing full well the song they recorded will forever be mutated, grow and change drastically whether its lyrically or in the arrangement. It's always a sketch that will forever be changing as the muse allows or some shit.

Rough mixes are i think much easier to define. This is the song. Its recorded. It has nothing to do with where the song is at but rather to do with the levels on all the instrumentation, vocals, in the finished recording. Turn that guitar up. Add some chorus to that one. Bury this vocal a bit, add some texture with some lasers. Anything prior to the finished album product.

We, the "Pearl Jam Enthusiasts" probably take this shit too seriously when trying to label some of these tracks. To the uninitiated nube they're all demos, and for the sake of Gremmie's filing structure, they just dump everything in that bucket. I agree with pete that it's unfortunate that these mislabeled and low-bitrate files have become the primary source for PJ rarities, but it's a decent place for someone to start. Hell, we all started with 4th generation Maxells so really it's not that bad.

I think the bigger crime over at Gremmie is the lossy bootleg situation when there are plenty of good torrent sites with high quality stuff out there. This coming from a guy who used to watch hours of VHS boots that had been dubbed so many times there was no colour left on the video.

For those of us who are not very good with torrent sites (I always seem to get a virus or the upload fails), the Gremmie site is great. However, even I can understand that the audio quality sucks.

I wish that all of the good sounding, rare stuff didn't have to come from torrent sites.

I'd pay $$ to belong to a site like Gremmie, where I could download a+ sound quality via flac.

I get what you're saying, for sure. The problem is the guy who runs gremmie clearly knows what he is doing. He knows his way around the PJ catalog and has access to all this shit. So it's well within his ability to A), provide better quality stuff, and B) (arguably even more important from an ethical standpoint), give credit to the tapers and include source lineage with his audience recordings. In fact, a lot of those text files that contain the source lineage have a note from the tapers saying "spread these as much as you want, just please don't convert my hard work to mp3".

[tooch]

sorry if this has been discussed a ton, but what did you mean about better man (live) being used for the studio version?

[LetMeSleep]

sorry if this has been discussed a ton, but what did you mean about better man (live) being used for the studio version?

The drum track from Atlanta 94 was used as the bed track. All other instruments were studio overdubs.

[Birds in Hell]

sorry if this has been discussed a ton, but what did you mean about better man (live) being used for the studio version?

The drum track from Atlanta 94 was used as the bed track. All other instruments were studio overdubs.

They actually appear to have used most of the live Atlanta version, I recall the guitars and even the vocals being largely identical. It seems as though they only overdubbed some percussion and acoustic guitar.

[Kevin Davis]

I guess when I started the thread I was just thinking of alternate studio takes.

Yeah, I'm curious about this too actually. I don't wanna derail your thread, but I've always been curious in seeing a list of songs (and where to find them) that have multiple recordings... like the Even Flow single, Alone, etc... Dead Man apparently has multiple recordings?

Derail away. I am pro-thread derailment. RM's obsessive-compulsive thread-splitting tendencies make me bonkers.