Magne,

As always, my Danish eating smoked fish kind of dude, you are exactly right on.

We all start out with some kind of raw recording. This is a work tape and can vary from boom box to lap top recording to any number of home done tapes. This is to give us an idea of what we have and the ability to play it with other songs in context.

A "next step" would be the guitar vocal, which might include one or two guitar parts, some harmonies, etc. usually done a track at a time. There are even different layers to this, if you do it yourself, hire someone to do it in a more professional context.

There are also the "level II" recordings which can include drum tracks, keyboard effects, etc. Usually even a little more involved. Some of these actually can be pitched depending on the skill of the people doing it.

The last are the "Full up" or full demos. This is usually where a studio and other musicians take the bull by the horns and put it into a radio ready sounding product.This is what most Nashville and today's contemporary pitches come from. And since so much of today's music is a "do it yourself" project (without backnig from a publishing or record company) we have to think of these as our calling cards, through My Space, Face book, Rhapsody, CD, Baby, or other related web sites and forums like these. That is what represents us when we aren't there.

Every writer should work through these levels depending on their own budget, circumstances and methods. There is no right or wrong way. Just results. The more thought you put into it and the more care you put into development, the better your end result will be.

MAB