KickstarterForum.org

[R2krw]

I've started a kickstarter to help fund an EP I would love to record of original songs. It would mean so much to have support on this. Please check out my story. I appreciate any help that I get! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/20 ... ca-watkins

[Charles]

I've started a kickstarter to help fund an EP I would love to record of original songs. It would mean so much to have support on this. Please check out my story. I appreciate any help that I get! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/20 ... ca-watkins

1. Certainly, I'm no music aficionado. So, feel free to take what I have to say with a hefty dose of salt. But, in all honesty, I think that you have a beautiful voice. I've sat and listened to you sing several different songs, now, some more than once, and that, alone, tells me that I like what I'm hearing. If your voice came over the radio, when I am driving along in my car, I would listen to it. I wouldn't be tempted to flick it off, or to find something else to listen to. I went ahead and backed your Kickstarter project.

2. Your project's funding goal is a reasonable amount. You're currently at $282 pledged on a goal of $3,000, with a total of four backers in tow. Just listening to your voice singing, as I sit and type this response to you, my gut instinct is telling me that you will reach your funding goal. I am listening to Someone (2013) as I type these words to you.

3. Someone is a good song. I like it, a lot. Your vocals are backed up with some solid music. They compliment one another. The song tempts my ears with the prospect of the range of your voice, but it doesn't really bring the range of it to full effect. In that sense, my ears feel denied. I like the beat of it. It's upbeat. I really like the song.

4. But, your Kickstarter project page doesn't effectively exploit your multiple advantages that you possess, as a vocal artist. Case in point - you're very attractive. Yet, your project page makes minor use of that key advantage. Kickstarter is a medium that rewards visual impact. Yes, I know, you are a singer - and a very good one, at that. But, if the objective is to maximize your funding, then to not plaster your project page with imagery of your visual attractiveness amounts to little more than a self-inflicted miscarriage of crowdfunding justice. Quit committing crowdfunding malpractice on your own project. Make your project page explode with imagery, IN ADDITION TO your music. Why chop your chances off at the legs, so unnecessarily? You're young. You're beautiful. To inject your project page with that sense of youthful energy, make it hyper-visible, so no matter where that project page visitors scroll to on your project page, you are there - right there in front of their eye.

5. At the moment, the SoundCloud site is undergoing maintenance, so it won't let me pull up your music on there at this moment, even though I had already pulled it up, previously. So, if potential backers encounter that same scenario, how will they access your music, to judge whether to pledge to you or not? Bring more of your music to your project page.

6. I will say it, again, to stress, emphasize, and underscore the point - Kickstarter is a VISUAL medium. It rewards visual impact. You need to post music videos of you singing various songs. The only music video of you that I have seen, so far, is the one of you singing Love Me Like You Do.

It is a MAJOR error of judgment on your part to not compliment your lovely voice with the visual accompaniment of the same with yourself in visual form. Personally, I couldn't care less for the bits of a movie that you have spliced into the video in question. But, how does that interest me, as a potential backer, in you?

When you sing, I want to watch you sing. I don't just want to hear your passion, I want to SEE it. I can't do that, if you won't let me. The same holds true for every other potential backer out there, as well.

Your video for that song is deficient on multiple grounds. Its creation is rather amateur. You look like an ordinary person creating their own video for YouTube. ACK!! Go forth and find someone to create music videos for you. You are committing a crime against your own career, by your current approach in that area. You want to be a start? You want to sell lots and lots of music? Then, for crying out loud, transform into that star in the here and now.

Don't just stand in front of that camera and look into it. I want to see you whirl and twirl and move and be impacted by your own music. I want to see your passion, and how it pours out all over your face and how it brings you alive and moves you, so that I might feel it, all the more.

7. OK, so now SoundCloud has your music available to me, once more. It took me a bit to find their volume control. I',m listening to I'll Be Gone (Original) 2009. I'm halfway through it, now, and it's not striking a chord within me.

Think about this, a bit. On your project page, you state, "The music industry is a constant battle to get in where you can and to showcase yourself in the most professional way. With your help I can put together a collection of music that will represent me as such an artist."

A lot of new songs by various musical artists don't strike a chord with people. They don't become hits.

But, many songs do become hits. Supplement your collection of original songs with a range of songs that others have turned into hits. Why? To showcase your voice, independent of whomever writes your original songs.

Monster (Original) 2012 is playing, now. It's not getting the job done for you. Granted, not everyone like the same songs, nor the same songs in the same way.

When you sing established hits, songs that are well known to the public at large, they are able to better gauge your voice. Singing original songs is all fine and dandy, but how do YOU sing the songs that THEY already love? How do YOU connect with the music that is ALREADY in their soul?

You're a good singer. But, your voice hints at being a great singer. It's like walking into a bakery that has only a small handful of confectionery items to chose from. Have your project page to "give them more."

I'm back to Love Me Like You Do. It's playing, again. My ears are coming alive. I am beginning to perk up, more. If you could see me typing on the keyboard, the difference in effect that this song has on my typing is very noticeably. The music clicks, so it makes me click. It makes my mind and my focus and my fingers all click. It generates energy.

I really like this song, and I like the way that you sing it. Your voice is subtle, in instances, and in other instances, it hints at passion and at vigor. But, the song, itself, won't let your voice explode upon me. The song holds you back, even as it prances your voice around. It has a nice ending, but the ending also leaves me feeling ACK!! It's over. Gone. Music is gone, now. Pah!

Half My Heart (Original with Marc One) 2013 is playing, again, now. It's an OK song. My mind takes greater note of it when it loses energy in your singing of it. I don't like it nearly as much as I like Love Me Like You Do. The music, itself, annoys me. Not your voice, but the instrumentals. All things considered, it does a much poorer job of showcasing you as a vocal talent than Love Me Like You Do.

SoundCloud wants me to sign up. Oh, sheesh - ANNOYANCE! It makes me want to click SoundCloud off, rather than want to pledge to back you on Kickstarter. Yet another reason to get more of your music on your project page, itself.

8. Think of your project page like this. There is your music, and there is the personal side of you. Even people who don't connect with your music may still connect with the personal connection that you bring to the fore and introduce them to. There is your project, and there is your story. Of the two, the story is, by far, the more important of the two. Your voice is only a part of your story. Your songs are only portions of your story. Your story is something bigger, something infinitely more interesting. By and large, creators on Kickstarter tend to spend far more time and effort getting the project - the base project - right, than they spend on developing and exploiting to their advantage the story part.

Get the story part right (the story is not just you trying to tell your story with words, either), and the Kickstarter world is your oyster.

I wish you the best with this crowdfunding project, and with your career as a singer, as well.

Don't just be a singer, though - Be a star!

[Charles]

One other thing, and I'll leave you be.

When you also include songs made famous by other vocal artists that preceded you, it is a form and method of paying tribute to those icons of musical greatness. If you can do their great songs justice, it commands respect - not just of people, in general, but with established fan bases, especially and particularly.

Established fan bases are, to characterize it another way, crowds and crowd segments. Want to absorb more people into your own fan base? Then give them ways to identify with your music, ways to grab their eye and to get their attention in the first place.

They already know what truly great songs are that are sung by truly great singers. What can you bring to that same table, the table that they already know and are familiar with?

It simply gives them another reason to like you, another reason to gravitate towards your music.

People take the ice bucket challenge, but can YOU take the challenge of music already known, and turn it to your advantage as an aspiring singer?

[Charles]

I also went ahead and did a share for it (you singing of Someone on SoundCloud) on Facebook. I don't try to maintain a large circle of Facebook "friends," though, but I did tag a couple of my Facebook friends who listen to music a lot. I'll let you know what they think about you singing Someone, if they post a response.

[Charles]

I did tag a couple of my Facebook friends who listen to music a lot. I'll let you know what they think about you singing Someone, if they post a response.

One said, "Not bad cousin Charles - loved the modern "techno" edge....her voice is strong too!"

The other said, "Agreed -- I'll listen to more of her stuff..."