Remember the adage, "A good song speaks for itself"? That same philosophy can be applied to the making of your demo. You've got a new tune, and maybe you can even hear the band parts in your head. And over there in the corner sits your lonely little multitracker, urging you to flesh out every facet of this brilliant new nugget.

Especially if you're the visionary, multi-instrumentalist type who can quickly conquer guitars, bass, drums, and all the bells and whistles on your own, a simplistic rendering with an acoustic guitar and a boombox recorder just isn't going to do the trick.

But why not? Jon Brion, the multifaceted songwriter and producer for Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright and, most recently, Fiona Apple, is someone who really can do it all, and very often has. The exception is that Brion usually saves his one-man show for Take 1 in the real studio. "There's this spark that you get when you're first starting to work on a 4-track that you can never really get back," says Brion. "I hate demos for that reason--so many people spend their first-take energy that way, and then go out and try to re-create it later on. I feel like if you've got a song, save it, and keep some of that excitement for the moment of recording it"...

This recent Guitar.com column continues here: http://guitar.com/columns/viewcolumn.asp?columnID=12