About this project

Hello music lovers and potential project backers! Thanks for visiting my project.

I need your help to finish what promises to be the recording that will take my career to the next level. Please check out the video, listen to clips on my website, tell others about my project via email, facebook or even just talking, and contribute to get some cool personalized rewards for helping.

If my funding goal is met, contributors like you will receive great rewards at the levels listed at right. Rewards like copies of the recording of course, birthday greetings, writing a song with me, special access to extra materials etc., plus the possibility of a surprise bonus reward to all if I exceed the original funding goal and reach $10,000!

I AM ALSO ADDING A TWITTER SONGWRITING COMPETITION TO THE PROJECT! If you want to enter, all you have to do is become a backer by pledging at least a dollar to my project for each submission, and then contact me through the site to submit either your lyrics, your melody, or a complete song. I will select at least one winner, and the winning submission will be arranged by me and recorded. You and the other backers will receive a copy of the finished song. By submitting a song, song lyric, or song melody, you agree that your submission may be used for recording and distribution to the backers, and that we each will have rights to our own contribution to the finished product. I look forward to your song submissions, and hope they will be in the jazz or pop vein appropriate to the style of music I perform, but they don't have to be to win. After all, a good song is a good song, right?

SEE UPDATE #4 FOR MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE SONGWRITING CONTEST INCLUDING HOW YOU MAY WIN A TRIP TO NEW YORK FOR THE RECORDING SESSIONS!.

Also, you can follow me on Twitter for up-to-the-minute info about the competition. On twitter, I am DianePerryJazz.

Anyway, you want to hear about the project, right? Well, here's the gist of it. Although I have been a professional gigging musician all of my adult life, have produced, co-produced, and helped produce recordings for others, and have been featured on recordings for others, I have never issued a recording of my own.

My initial funding goal is for actual recording costs (studio, engineer, and the other instrumentalists on the recording sessions), but the need for funding doesn't stop there.

After the recording sessions I will still need to mix the tracks, and master the project. I will need photos and artwork for the CD itself. Then there is CD replication costs, mechanical licenses for the songs, and finally promotional materials and a proper CD release party and performance. I will cover these costs, but every additional dollar I get over the initial funding goal will help with these additional expenses. That is why I am offering additional bonuses to all backers if the funding goes over $10,000.

I have a seven song demo which I recorded last year. The song you hear on my video is one of them. I want to "fix and mix" some of what I already have, and record some more tunes, including possibly a few originals, to expand this rough-mixed demo into a full-fledged, professionally packaged CD that can be sold both on the web and at my shows.

Although I am proud of what I have accomplished on my demo, it is not entirely finished. I need to represent more of the different types of music I do, show off my abilities at scatting, and showcase some of my original songs. I also need to remix the already recorded material. I want this, my debut recording as a solo artist, to represent the very best of what I am able to do, and so it must be world-class in terms of quality.

So, this is the way it works: You can pledge any dollar amount to help me finance the production of this recording, and if the project is successfully funded by the deadline, you will get, along with my gratitude and the satisfaction of being a backer and helping my career, the reward that is listed at that dollar amount at right.

If the funding goal is not reached by the deadline, you will be charged nothing, and I will receive...

nothing.

BUT that won't happen, right?

In fact, if there is some reward that you think you'd like to have that is not listed, I would relish getting some more ideas, you creative genius, you!

My new CD, when finished, will be sent to clubs and festivals, both local and world-wide, as I look for more opportunities to share this music that I love so much, and sold at my gigs, and on the web.. Gig sales are especially important, they subsidize the sometimes inadequate pay so I can afford to hire the best accompanists while still sharing my talent with more and more people.

After all, music is really about communication. I can sit and sing and play to my heart's delight in my living room, but self-expression, as nice as that is, isn't really accomplished until what you want to express has reached someone else.

This is why I reach out to you, Kickstarter community. I will be writing frequent updates so you can track and follow the progress of the planning and execution of the whole process. ALL REWARDS WILL BE AUGMENTED BY BONUSES IF I REACH THE ADDITIONAL FUNDING GOAL OF $10,000.

Please take a moment to check out the video above; you will be able to hear one of the tracks on my demo. You can listen to more of my music, including tracks that feature my violin playing, on my website, dianeperryjazz.com. and check out my blog, dianeperryjazzviolin.com.

I would be so grateful if you will support my efforts to finally release a beautiful CD of my own. My project begins the night I open for jazz guitar legend, Bucky Pizzarelli, at The Minstrel Concert Series, 26 Normandy Heights Rd in Morristown, NJ, Friday, March 4, 2011.

So please, listen to the music, help spread the word about my project, send me your comments and let me know what you think, and contribute if you can. Thanks for checking out my project!

Sincerely,

Diane Perry dianeperryjazz.com

dianeperryjazzviolin.com