Demo

In Music

A demo is a way for artists to get their musical ideas on tape, and in most cases, provide an example of the ideas to record labels, producers or other artists. Typically, these demos are recorded very inexpensively on cheap boom boxes or 4-track or 8-track machines. These demos are rarely heard by the public, although some artists do eventually release rough demos in rarities compilations or box sets.

Many unsigned bands and artists record demos in order to obtain a record contract[?]. These demos are usually sent to record label's in hopes that the artist will be discovered. Usually, large record labels ignore demos that are sent to them, unless they request them.

Many signed bands and artists record demos of new songs before recording an album. It is also common for songwriters to record demos before submitting their songs to artists to record. These demos (or "Songwriter's Demos") are recorded with minimal instrumentation - usually just an acoustic guitar and the vocalist.

In Computers

A demo is a way for demomakers to demonstrate their abilities in: programming (that's the coding part), music (zik), drawing (gfx), and/or 3D modeling[?]. It is a kind of non-interactive multimedia presentation, the difference with a classical animation being that the display of a demo is computed in real time (like people performing a play compared to showing a movie), making computing power considerations the biggest challenge. For now a demo is mostly composed of 3D animations[?] mixed with 2D effects[?].

There are three main kinds or types of demos :

• intro 4k : limited size and no music (mostly)
• intro 64k : limited size, no other restrictions.
• demo : virtualy no limit.

Restrictions change from one competition to another, depending on the machine on which the programs are run. The demos are now most commonly designed to run on PC, but not that long ago were mostly designed to run on C64, Atari and Amiga. There are even demos running on TO7[?], BeBox, RISC PC, Macintosh, Amstrad CPC, Gameboy or Playstation.

Notable demo groups include the Future Crew, Renaissance[?], the Silents[?], Cascadia[?], Witan[?], Triton[?] and many others.