104%

Hello Everyone -

wow – we made it!
Thanks to your efforts and support we have reached 103% with 50 some hours to go. I can’t thank you enough. I am so excited about this project – today I called the studio to book time, called my rep at the CD duplicator to tell them to expect the project – now into the studio to write, write, write.

I have been a member of the KickStarter website for a long time, but waited to post a project until the time felt right. I had a number of ideas for projects, but I kept thinking to myself, what if. What if I could book an outside studio? What if I could hire musicians to come and play? What if I could have it professionally mixed and mastered? So I put together a budget and shot for the moon. I never imagined that I would reach my goal – I was sure it was too much to ask of my network. But thanks you, we made it.

So what happens now? Well, we have just over 50 hours left to continue to fundraise. The more we raise, the more studio time I can use – or I can buy extra pizza for the band. But everything we raise will go to make the project as great as possible. So please continue to pass the links around and ask people to contribute. Use it as your facebook status, twitter and where ever else you can post it. Let’s see how high we can go.

Kayle.

Published:
January 10, 2010 – 12:49 am
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By Kayle
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Kickstart

Yesterday I launched my kickstarter project.

If you are not familiar with Kickstarter – it is a website that allows you to post a project, in my case my new album, and ask people to support it. You can choose from different levels of support, and if I don’t reach my goal, the project doesn’t get funded. It is all or nothing. For more information, please visit http://bit.ly/kayle-cd

With this next album project, I hope to take things to the next level. I am looking to book an outside studio, hire musicians, and have it professionally mastered. All of this is very exciting, but a lot more expensive.

Over half my budget goes to cover recording, mastering and duplicating costs. The rest goes to musicians, marketing and maybe some pizza. Every penny we raise will go to make the album as great as possible. If we raise more than our target amount, I can spend more time in the studio.

As a rule of Kickstarter – if I don’t reach my goal of $5,567, my project doesn’t get funded, and you won’t get charged, but you also won’t get the rewards. We both lose. It’s all or nothing, so every penny counts.

There are a number of different levels and amounts to get involved. I hope you can find something here that makes you want to give up some of your hard earned money.

We all know times are tough. And it may seem crazy to ask for $5,567 to record an album. But I want to take this album to the next level, and put a little more money in the pockets of musicians, a couple engineers.

A big Thanks in advance for reading this far and thinking about supporting me and independent music. I hope you want to be involved, but if you can’t, or this isn’t the project for you, that’s ok – but please tell your friends and family and see if they might want to get involved.

Published:
December 2, 2009 – 11:56 pm
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By Kayle
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Simple

After many months of work (and many delays), I have finished the tracks sitting on my hard drive and complied them together into my newest album titled Simple Pleasures. Some have been posted before on various sites,and some are new. But they are all now available in one place. And that one place would be Bandcamp.com. In an effort to simplify life I have decided to use this great site to host my music. It supports album artwork and encodes the files in various high quality formats, AIF, WAV, FLAC, and high resolution MP3s. You choose which format to download – I’m all about choice.

So please check it out at http://kayleclements.bandcamp.com.

Published:
September 13, 2009 – 12:53 am
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By Kayle
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Focus.

Over the summer I have been doing a lot of thinking. And as I sat there working on yet another new design, it occurred to me – I spend more time thinking about and designing new looks, finding the right templates, customizing them to look cool and re-writing the text to fit, all at the expense of actually sitting down and writing music. It seems to me that lately, my website has been mostly show and very little substance. And certainly lacking in focus.

Well, I have turned a corner my friend, and have designed my last website. No more fancy graphics and flashy roll-overs. No more shopping for new templates and new music players and new widgets, and new gizmos. I am committed to getting back to basics. With this post, I have switched to WordPress and this very simple, clean theme. My goal is to shift the time I spend constructing a fancy website to writing more music and updating my site more often. No more working on new logos. No more putting off writing music for just one more tweet.

Now, admittedly, I am an internet addict and I am easily distracted. There are a number of very cool developments online, sites such as bandcamp, soundcloud, kickstarter and others that I think open up a ton of opportunities for independent artists. It seems everyday there is a new way to promote, publicize, and get the word about about what indy artists are up to. And I love finding out about them, taking them for a test drive and kicking the tires a little bit. So I will use this space to comment on things I find from time to time. Maybe that will provide the outlet for my addiction and allow me to focus on making music again. I’m calling it controlled distraction.

For the last year or so I have tagged myself as a composer and musician. Now, it’s time to focus.

Published:
September 8, 2009 – 3:10 pm
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By Kayle
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