Demo composition...???

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Ok, when I say demo, I don't mean the kind you have finished ideas on, ready to ship to a record company, Im talkin about the demos you record to get an idea of a song on tape, and possibly present it to the other musicians in your band.

So My question is, are there supposed to be drums on these kinds of demos??? Sometimes I feel like I want to record these great song ideas, but when I go to record them, they are just lacking without drums/bass and I just lose all inspiration. I really dont want to program the drums, so how do you guys do it?? Does anyone just have a ticking metronome on their basic song sketch recordings??? Im just about to get started in recording some rough demos, so I just really wanted to know how everyone else did it.

 

[Erik]

I program drums. It's not that big of a hassle to pound out some basic 4/4 beats or what have you. It's better than a metronome and only takes maybe half an hour for adequate patterns.

 

[fragility]

Even if it is the simplest little bit of drums with very little in the way of fills etc, it will sound 100 x better than without and actually give the song a little more meaning in terms of what it should sound like - worth the extra little effort definately

 

[Genocide]

It doesn't matter to me whether there are drums on it in the early stages of the song's developement. Usually I will just record one guitar track to get a feel for how the drum patterns should be laid out and to work on vocal patterns. The only times my "demo" recordings get drums are after we've rehearsed them a couple of times and then we do a Live recording.