[Guitar Slim II]

Sorry, but I'm not so sure about using a recording from a gig as my professional demo. Setting up a quality recording at a live venue would be a lot more work than getting similar quality at home. The alternative is, what, cell-phone video? I have to tell you, if I could remove every second of live cell-video of myself from Youtube, I would in a second. I would prefer not to be professionally associated with it...

I agree that you shouldn't misrepresent yourself. If you're a solo act, then you don't want a rhythm section, strings, backup vocals, etc, on your demo. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't put some time into it, make it look and sound professional. These days, you can do that from your own bedroom, for little or no money.

My advice is, learn more about recording at home. Every musician probably needs to know a little about it anyway. And Audacity is fine if you're just working with audio, but I don't think it does plug-ins and soft-synths. You've also got mics, do you have an interface of some kind? I guess you could use the Zoom and import a sound file? Never used one, so I'm not sure.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with just singing and playing the song and recording it. Do it in your quiet room, set up your mic or mics properly, and add some reverb and EQ afterwards. Make it sound great.

And do it one song at a time. At this point, don't think in terms of a multi track demo to be printed on a CD, to be done by a certain deadline. Build your material one song at a time, and learn along the way. Anything you like, you can share on Soundcloud - or Youtube if you know how...

Finally, I agree that digital, streaming and online media are the most convenient way to share your tracks with prospective bookers. But don't count the old CD out just yet. Once you get enough tracks, you can put them on a CD and sell it as "merch" at your gigs. On a good night, CD sales can be a nice bonus to whatever else you made at the show.