More about Lori Carmichael.
Original Music directly from the Artist to You!
Turning Life into Lyrics
I’m a Canadian singer-songwriter drawn to storytelling through music. My songs blend pop, folk, country, and Celtic influences, often exploring love, loss, and the quiet beauty of everyday life.
After stepping away from live performance for a time, I felt a renewed creative spark. I’ve been returning to my musical archives—reworking unreleased material, polishing old demos, and writing new songs as fresh ideas continue to appear.
These days I’m spending time in the studio revisiting older songs while creating new ones and sharing both the music and the stories behind it.
Songwriting has always been at the heart of what I do. For me, a great song has a life of its own, and I’m grateful to still be following where the music leads.
Staging a Song
As a songwriter, my goal is to present my songs in the best possible light when creating demos for licensing. I often compare the process to preparing a house for sale.
You might wash it, paint it, complete necessary renovations and upgrades, and then stage each room to help potential buyers see the home’s possibilities. Once everything is ready, you might bring in a photographer or videographer to capture the home at its very best.
I take much the same approach with my song demos.
Today, I use the tools and resources available to me to make each demo sound as professional, polished, and compelling as possible. Depending on the song, that may include studio musicians, commercially available samples and instruments, Real Band tracks, AI-assisted production tools, edited stems, or other resources. The goal is always the same: to create a recording that showcases the song and captures the attention of music directors, orchestrators, A&R professionals, and others looking for material to license.
Of course, I could record many of these songs simply by sitting at the piano or picking up my guitar—and for some songs, that is still exactly the right approach. But when a fuller production helps communicate the song’s potential, I enjoy taking the extra steps to bring that potential to life.
I also enjoy singing my own demo vocals. Although I am not focused on performing live, singing the songs myself helps me stay connected to the material and communicate the emotion and intention behind it before the song moves on to another artist. For songs that are not ideally suited to my voice, I sometimes invite friends to step in and sing them.
So, this is how I produce—or “stage”—my song demos.
The finished recording is not intended to be the final performance of the song. It is there to help you see—and hear—the possibilities.
I hope you enjoy discovering them.