While it’s not necessary for you to be present during a group demo session - it sure is fun and a great learning experience. Kim encourages you to be there if you can.

Here’s what a typical group session is like:

After you’ve secured a spot on the upcoming session and sent in your rough work tape and lyric sheets, you and Kim will have a meeting, (by phone if necessary), to discuss your vision for your song. She will go over your ideas and contacts for pitching the song. She’ll want to know as much as possible about how you want the finished product to sound. You will discuss the type of singer that is needed to capture and the instrumentation you are hearing.

When Kim has all the songs for the session, she books the studio musicians and the vocalists. Bringing together the team that she feels will produce the best demos possible for the writers she is working for.

After the singers are booked, she gets copies of the rough demos to them. They will listen through the song several times, and determine the best key for them to sing it in. They send this info to Kim.

Kim prepares the number charts for all the songs, making any necessary notes to the musicians. She makes copies for all the musicians, the engineer, the vocalists and herself. On recording day, she goes over the first song with the musicians while they are all listening to the rough tape. After discussing the song, they all go into the studio. When the engineer has the recording levels set for all the musicians and the scratch vocalist, they will make a few passes through the song. Anything that Kim feels needs to be adjusted is discussed, noted and its’ time to record the tracks. Several of the musicians will go back though and put additional parts on the songs. Kim usually likes to have multiple acoustic guitar parts and a rhythm pass on the electric guitar as well. When the tracks are recorded on that song, the process is repeated for each of the next 4 or 5 songs.

After all the tracks on all the songs are completed, the musicians leave and it’s time for the singers to come in and do their magic. The first singer arrives and listens to the recorded tracks for the song her or she will be singing. Going over with Kim any arrangement differences that may have occurred since the rough tape was created. The singer will then head to the vocal booth and sing along with the tracks a time or two, just getting settled in. Then they will record the lead vocal on the song.

Kim listens along during this pass making any notes of adjustments or tweaks that she wants to make. After these changes are recorded, Kim and the singer will listen through to the song from top to bottom one more time. If background vocals or harmonies are to be added to the song, they will make notes on what lines these should sung on. When the harmonies are all added and the final listen though is complete, that singer will leave and the next arrives, repeating that same process.

After all the songs have been sung, the engineer needs some time to set the board up for the mixing session. When the engineer gets the mix up and close, then Kim sits down with him and gives him direction on the song. Levels of the vocal, harmonies and lead parts are all fine tuned. Drum sounds are tweaked, etc. After she has listened and adjusted, listen and tweaked - then the engineer will burn a copy of the mixed version to the hard drive. He will then drop out the vocal parts and burn a track mix for the songwriter.

After that first song is completed, the mixing process is repeated for the remaining songs from the session. This gives each song the attention it deserves.

Each songwriter gets:

• One on one attention from the producer, Kim Copeland
• A full band recording and a professional vocalist
• A professional engineer and studio
• A stereo recording on CD of their song and of their track mix. (The track mix is a great thing to have should you ever need to go back and have a singer record a new lyrical re-write. You'll save lots of money because you won't have to re-cut the entire song.)
• A DVD containing all the mucis files on the song. (If you should ever want to add an instrument or harmony, you don't hvae to re-cut the whole song.)