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Give Voice to Dezirae Elizabeth

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Hello there, my name is Dezirae Elizabeth, I’m a singer planning on creating my very first demo and even a full-fledged album. This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for years, but I never knew where to start. Now that's all changed. With your help and the help of other generous supporters, I’m hoping to raise money to get this musical journey started and to maintain it's course.

So where to begin? Let’s start with age four. Determined to learn a full-length song, because I was bored to tears with nursery rhymes, I challenged myself to learn “Colors of the Wind” from ©Disney’s “Pocahontas”. I took my Mr. Mike Mic Voice Recorder, recorded the song straight from VHS, and played back the song to myself every single day much to the annoyance of my father who was working from home at that time. Finally fed up with the never-ending encore of Judy Kuhn blaring from my recorder, my father asked me to stop playing my music. Like any other obedient child, I did as I was told. Besides I needed to practice without the music to make sure I had it memorized, so I started singing to myself not knowing that my father could hear me. He came knocking at my door again and patiently, albeit wearily, asked me, “Dezirae, what did I tell you?”

“Not to play my music,” I replied.
“So how come I still hear music playing?”
“That wasn’t my music Daddy. I was singing.”

Naturally he didn’t believe me and asked me to prove it to him. I’ll never forget the look of disbelief on my father’s face or how his jaw went slack the moment I started to sing. Now at the time I had no idea I could sing. I was just a four-year-old little girl who wanted to learn a song, but that day set the tone [if you’ll pardon the pun] for the rest of my life. I’m still singing to this day, and on occasion I even sing “Colors of the Wind”, but my taste in music has expanded over the years and so has my repertoire. Over those years I’ve taken part in: talent shows, singing contests, community/Christmas events, sang as an opening act for the international award winning acapella group, OC Times , and I’ve sung at local churches as well as weddings. Without fail, someone or even a group of people would approach me after these events inquiring if I’ve ever considered making a CD while others wanted a copy of a nonexistent CD right then and there. Unfortunately, I never had any made and their disappointment, to this day, lingers in my mind.

Well, I receive the same input and request to this day and that is why I’m certain that this is the time for me to finally move onto the next stage [again I apologize for all these bad puns] and get my voice out there for the world to hear. The demo is the first step: I’ll be sending out demos to several music producers as well as to artists that I admire and during all this, I’ll be looking for more chances to gain exposure wherever I can. Step two: I’m currently assembling songs as well as musicians to collaborate with me on the album which requires support from kind donors such as yourself. If you want to make sure your money is being invested into something worthwhile, please listen to my stand alone, professionally recorded rendition of “Better Than I” (© Dreamworks, Joseph: King of Dreams)  as well as some recordings I’ve made from home which you can find on the homepage of my website: http://dezirae.info/ . You can even find me on YouTube at this web address https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzbHFhN3RlYPNt0SiC5WmvQ . If you’d like to learn more about me, you’ll find a section headed Backstory: Life’s Interruptions & The Comeback right here in this campaign. Thank you for your time and your generosity.

What, Who, & Where Is Your Money Going To:

Michael Eardley: President and founder of Tanglewood Productions , Michael Eardley is one of the most sought out men due to his superior skills and ear as a sound engineer, his first-hand experience as a professional singer in the music entertainment world, and for his astounding track record for producing Grammy award-winning albums .
Live Musicians: We value the people who have generously offered to help make this album come to life and our musicians deserve to be compensated for their time and talent.
Sheet Music: Our musicians, and I, will require sheet music in order to rehearse and to have during recording sessions.
Performance Rights & Music Licenses: Published music used solely for performances, without retaining a fee, is free for anyone to use whereas published music that is being commercially sold is not. A music license will insure that we are legally adhering to copyright laws as well as making sure that all parties who created the published music receive their dues.
Studio Time & Sound Engineering: Time is money as they say, and Tanglewood Productions offers the best packages for a vocal artist like me. We want to capture the best sound my vocals have to offer, so the product wouldn’t be finalized until it’s undergone some polishing.
Exposure: We’re going around our local city and to local churches to gain some notoriety. Eventually, I’ll be gaining exposure out of state, so we’ll be traveling quite a bit. Your contributions will make it possible for me to travel from venue to venue.
Essentially: Your donation is helping me to launch and promote my singing career. If possible, please be sure to give us your physical address and email address, so we can keep in touch with you because we would love to express our gratitude in a personalized way. Thank you for all your support! It means the world to me.

Backstory: Life’s Interruptions & The Comeback

For me, singing has always been a part of my life and it’s difficult to imagine what my life would have been like had I never sang a single note. All though I came close to that reality during my teenage and young adult years. At age 17, just a week before summer vacation, I had my fist seizure in my high school’s cafeteria. When the school nurse insisted that it was a seizure, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. No one in my family’s medical history had any neurological disorders, so the idea was not possible in my mind, but when it became a common occurrence I thought to myself, “Maybe the nurse was right.” To sum up this “interruption” in my life would cover four neurologists who couldn’t understand the cause or underlying issue for the seizures, dealing with people who callously would remark I was merely “doing-it-for-attention” as well as giving me nicknames such as “spaz” or “twitch” for their amusement, and frankly between the seizures and the ignorant nonsense of others it was physically draining. It was my first neurologist that gave me and my parents a list of things and activities to avoid, so that stimuli wouldn’t aggravate or trigger an event. The second item on the list he emphatically emphasized is that I would have to give up singing and music. According to him, I needed all the energy I could get since every episode was always followed by fatigue and sleep, so there was no reason to overtax myself with such stimulation. I thought my world had fallen apart and I was so angry. At first, we heeded the doctor’s orders, but singing, we came to realize, wasn’t something that I could put on a shelf and simply not do. I was on medical absence during my senior year of high school and frankly it’s pretty much a blur, but there was still music and I would sing when I had the strength to do it which wasn’t very much or that often. I managed to graduate, walked with my graduating class, and for the next four and half years I battled with seizures. Nothing seemed to work until 2011, on a Good Friday, I was healed. I have been seizure free since then and I sing whenever and wherever I get the chance. Thank You King Jesus!

My second “interruption” came from an unlikely source, during my brief time in college. The university I attended prided itself on its music department and having no formal training or formal education music wise, I applied for a Music Major. I believed it was going to be worth it. I would learn everything I needed to know if I were to sing with other singers or with musicians, like: sight-reading, music theory, how to compose, the ability to read music which I’ve never been able to do, etc., etc. I was determined to learn by the book, however, no one was really interested in teaching the basics despite that the classes I signed up and paid for were for beginners. Despite this, I wanted to learn music their way more than anything, so much so, that I gave up my way of learning music. That and my way was not permitted, and it would be sorely frowned upon and not to mention it would have gravely injured my grades according to all my instructors; So that was an incentive not to do it my way. By the time November rolled in, I was convinced that I never knew how to sing. I had been advised to drop a class because I didn’t understand beginner’s music theory and one of my professors, a holder of a doctorate in Music Performance, had reminded me that I had once said I could learn music quickly. I replied, “If you would allow me to do it my way I could, but it’s not allowed. You said so yourself.” From that point, I began to hate singing and my music classes. Most of all I hated myself for not knowing how to do things their way. It was the first time in my life that I contemplated giving up singing and when I told my Dad my thoughts he said these words: “They’re trying to teach a bird how to sing.” At first, I had no idea what he was talking about, but my vocal coach was able to get it through to me.

Between university life and the seizures, I was taking vocal lessons from a man who told my parents, from the very beginning, that he couldn’t teach me to sing because I already knew how. Instead, he taught me his breathing techniques and gave me a few tools to enhance my singing which I still use to this day. It was during one of my lessons that he could sense and literally hear my hesitation in every word I was singing, or rather whispering at that point. Slamming down on his ivory keys, he asked me what my problem was, and a floodgate busted open. I told him everything and that I wanted to give up singing. And then he said, verbatim, what my father said, “They’re trying to teach a bird how to sing.” I pondered how strange or rather stupid it was for someone to try to teach a bird to sing since birds naturally sing on their own. “Exactly!” was his response and the lights suddenly turned on. I was the songbird. Not too long after that, I had a seizure during an intermission of “HMS Pinafore”, which I was part of as a chorus girl, and not long after that I received a letter from the university that I lost my scholarship due to my condition. Talk about a blessing from God because I never had to go back to any of those music classes again! Overtime I regained my love, my confidence, and passion for singing again and frankly I couldn’t be more grateful for the “interruptions” in my life.

Currently, I’ve completed my first professionally recorded single demo (“Better Than I”, © Dreamworks, “Joseph: King of Dreams”) and that was an experience in and of itself. When I walked into Michael’s studio, Tanglewood Productions, I was under the impression we were going to sit down to discuss his prices, ask for his opinion on live musicians and how to go about acquiring copyrights, those kinds of the things. Instead, Michael asked for my song, set it up on his computer than introduced me to the recording booth and told me to do a dry run. Just so I could get an idea of how the process was going to be like. Boy was it dry, my mouth that is, because I never thought I’d be standing let alone recording in a recording booth so soon. Once he was back inside his booth, he revved up my music and as soon as I heard it in my headphones I started to sing. Now, I could see Michael’s head from my booth, but I couldn’t see his facial expressions, so when I finished singing I wasn’t sure what to expect. He had me listen to my own recording through the headphones and told me that for being a dry, my recording was perfect. There was only one problem. Michael came into the recording booth and said, “You need a better mic.”

He unscrewed the Blue Mic and went to grab a different one, but the microphone he brought back was unlike any mic I had ever seen. I made a remark on it’s “beast-like” size and Michael grinned. He told me it belonged to Frank. I cross-referenced my music to singer database inside my brain and the first connection I made was, “As in Frank Sinatra!?”

Michael had just finished screwing on the mic on to its new shock mount and replied, “Yep. This is one of Ol’ Blue Eyes mics . He used to record with this.” Talk about being gob smacked, but what Michael said next floored me. “I don’t let everyone record with this mic. Only certain people get to use this and it’s rare for me to pull it out. You need this mic for your voice.” Talk about being in awe and feeling embarrassed all at once. Me? Needing a mic of that caliber and a mic that was used by Sinatra himself? I can honestly say my throat got that much drier especially when Michael had me do a second recording, so I could hear the difference in quality. After recording with that microphone, I don’t think I could work with a different mic because that mic captured my voice in such a beautiful way. It was, like, I was really hearing myself for the first time! We cleaned up two small parts with me re-recording those bits and I was able to nail it right off the bat, much to Michael’s delight, then he told me to return to the sound engineering booth. After some mixing and polishing, Michael swiveled around in his seat and slapped his hand on his knee.

“You are a singer,” Michael said to me and he burned my recording straight to CD. “You came prepared, you’re able to hear what needs to be tweaked and you take direction easily,” Michael said with an ear-to-ear smile. “That is the perfect demo.” At the time I couldn’t understand why everyone was so excited; But when it finally sank in (honestly it took hours later for it to sink in) it hit me like a ton of bricks. I just made a professional recording with a Grammy-Award winning sound engineer! I screamed much to mother’s dismay since we were in the car when the realization hit me. I can honestly say I'm still reeling and I can’t wait to get back into the recording booth to see this project through until it's completed.

*Please share this campaign with family and friends. You can share it through Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, Instargram or email it. Which ever way you think will give this campaign momentum, please do it! Every post and share of this campaign is exposure to a wider audience and it will generate more chances of receiving donations.  So,thank you for taking the time to read this and for your consideration as well as your support.
Sincerely, Dezirae Elizabeth

*You can also find and follow me on: Twitter, FaceBook and Instagram  #GiveVoiceToDE

(Last Updated: 7.1.19 @ 1:29 PM)

Organizer

Dezirae Brannum
Organizer
Sparks, NV

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