If you don't think it's possible, you should head to Nashville and have a recording studio make a demo for you from *just* a guitar/vocal take that you send them.
I've done that a couple of times now (14 songs), and am simply amazed what they are capable of doing.
The band leader (in my case, it was the bass player on the sessions and one of the studio owners) had a Zoom meeting with me about a week before the scheduled session. He listened to my work tape, we'd talk about any changes we wanted (add a solo section, expand the intro, etc) and what key the demo vocalist wanted to record it in. He would then later write out the chart.
On the day of the recording session, he'd hand out the chart to the musicians (I had a seven-piece band: drums, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboards, pedal steel guitar, and fiddle . . . some were multi-instrumentalists, so we'd add a banjo or dobro or mandolin on some songs). Then they'd listen to my work tape, we'd talk about how I wanted it to sound or any other info I could give them on what I was thinking), and off they'd go. That takes about 5 minutes. In the remaining 25 minutes, they work out the arrangement of the song as I'm sitting there singing scratch vocals. That's it . . . in 30 minutes they are DONE (including any solos they come up with). It's amazing to watch and be a part of.
The demo vocalist as added later, and typically takes an hour (including any harmonies). Then an hour or two of final mixing/etc, and it's done.
Here's an example:
This is the work tape I sent them:
Here's the demo that the studio came up with (with a couple of changes to the lyrics I came up with before the recording session):
And finally the version that's going on the album (my vocals, and a few more changes to the lyrics, and a few "fun" things we added like a whip):
I asked for "whimsical" playing during the demo, and mentioned that (in spite of the name), that this song really belonged to the electric guitar player (a bit "rocked up"). They nailed it! There were no solo parts written out for anybody . . this was all pure improvisation!
|