making a beat cd...

Tacit

i know i'm not a die-hard poster, but i'd definitely appreciate some feedback on this topic. i'm trying to put together a collection of beats i've worked on over the last couple of years. it's something i've put off for way too long because every time i sit down with the intention of finalizing/polishing beats that are 75% done, i start new ones instead.my question is, how complete do you feel a beat cd should be if you are seriously trying to get folks to listen to you. in other words, should each beat be professionally mixed, should you have all your switchups placed where you want, etc...? or is it cool to almost distribute them as sketches that sound good and give a fairly clear idea of what the sound is, but still needs some tweaking?thanks in advance for your advice.also, you can check out some of my stuff on www.myspace.com/tacitbeatspeace.

hemol

It all depends on what you are trying to do.
If you want to get people to rap on your beats, then you don't need much more than a few loops, and the rest can be taken care of later on. If you are trying to get a label to release your record it should be done, unless you are some kind of undiscovered genius. If you want to seel them yourself, then they're ready to go when you're sick of working on them.

crossings

only advice i can think of is keep the beats short... like a minute or so... it's better to leave people wanting to hear more of a beat than to make them tired of the same loop over & over again. also, make sure your levels/EQs are all balanced out... nothing worse than having to adjust the volume every couple minutes. and make sure the mix is not just 1 single long track... people looking for beats to rap on wanna be able to skim through a demo pretty quickly until something draws their attention.

that's all i can really think of for now.