Not Bad For A Girl: Casio Katie prepares for her Barrel House, Totnes, gig

Katie Marie sets up a new Myspace page to promote her acoustic concert at the Barrel House, Totnes, she gets essential kit for her studio, and… psst… we also have her singing in the rain in Germany

Hello there lovely peeps! Hope you’ve had a good week, mine has been pretty productive – a mixture of gig promo and buying stuff (the latter being much more fun! lol).

As Dan (Crisp) and my gig at the wonderful Barrel House draws ever closer, I’ve been preparing as much as poss by getting our Myspace page together as well as ordering a ga-zillion posters and flyers to go here there and everywhere!

If you’re wondering who made our amazing posters, it was the very talented soul who I have to say a massive THANK YOU! for making them look soooo very swanky and posh (as always!)

So do feel free to head on over to our Myspace page and link up to our poster and add it to anywhere you bloomin well please. As always it’s *very* muchappreciated.

In my previous article I talked about my wonderful German Tour and mentioned that Elli and I both recorded sets for Balcony TV in Hamburg which are now online! Pop over to the Balcony TV website and you can check me out playing tunes in the rain! It was so much fun and I’m very grateful to the Balcony TV peeps not only for letting us play but for speaking to me in English!

‘So come on Katie! What are the new gadgets you’ve bought for your studio??’ I hear you cry… Well, they are two bits of equipment I feel are absolutly *vital* for any moden day studio.  First up is something I’ve been wanting to get my mitts on for aaaagggeeesss now. It is a TL Audio Ivory 2 Dual Valve Compressor! Wooha!

I only picked it up last night, so I’m looking forward to having a proper mess with it later today. I mainly want to use it for vox and acoustic guitar and at present I’ve not got any compression unit other than what’s on my Carillon PC, so I’m hoping this’ll add some more warmth and clarity to my tunes!

And next up is something I saw and fell in love with. I was walking past a secondhand shop (and you know what I’m like in secondhand shops!!) and spotted this little beauty. It is, the one… the only – Casio CTK-100!

This keyboard has to have some of the most awful sounds I think I’ve ever heard, but I love it!! I was testing it out at home after I bought it and the sounds are so bad that my other half walked in from the next room and warned me that if I didn’t switch my lovely new keyboard off that it was going out the window! Hmm, fair enough. But it’s sooo bad it’s good. The sounds are so terrible on it you can’t help but want to play them over and over! It’s so much fun and for a tenner I think I got a real bargain.

Anyways I’d best get on, I’ve got dogs to walk and boring grown up paper work to do (booooo!). So hope you have a great week and I’ll catch ya next time!

• Check out Katie Marie on MySpace, or on her website.