Katie Marie is about to get her marching orders… well, more like pointers… and it’s just what she’s after
Hello there peeps! Hope you’ve had a wonderful week dispite this rather yucky weather!
As you’ll know from my previous article, last Sunday was my gig @ The Barrel House with Dan Crisp. I’m happy to report that it went really, really well and I have to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who came along. Hope you had as much fun as we did! They’ll be lots of vids and photos up online very soon, so watch this space!
So after that great start to my week, I’ve been working hard writing TV type tunes in my lovely little studio. Only had one nightmare with the weather (nothing like the burst pipe disaster I had last year!!) where by a window frame started letting in water, but it nothing a bit of filler couldn’t fix.
As I’ve mentioned before I’m currently writing lots of different styles of music for a US music library. So far I’ve written a Rumba track, a Reggae tune, a Blues number and now my latest mission is writing a March tune. Yes, march… as in marching band.
It wasn’t until I sat down in the studio and armed myself with pen and paper to begin writing this master-piece that I realised one very important thing – I have absolutely *no* idea what on earth I was doing! lol It’s probably one of the few genres of music that I’ve not had much (or any!) experience playing or even hearing. So I hopped onto Youtube and began trying to find Marching tunes and sadly wasn’t really getting anywhere. I headed back to my studio and hoped that I’d somehow find some inspiration of a marching nature, but sadly the ideas I came up with sounded more like a tune from a proper retro computer game than a classical marching piece!
So that evening I had a band practice with local indie peeps Papa Fernando. In our break I was chatting away to drummer Mike, who was talking about rudiments and general drummy type things, like ‘yeah, it was just like when I was in that marching band when I was a kid… used to do that aaaalll the time! I was in that band for about six years and I got best marching drummer award!’
Oh my God, I have a living breathing Marching Band person right in front of me!!
Like grease lightning I got out my pen and paper and said: “I want you to tell me *everything* there is to know about being in a marching band!!” He initally thought I’d gone a bit loopy, but then I explained about my trouble with composing a marching piece and he was more than happy to pass on his wonderful marching knowledge.
The next day I went back to my lovely studio, armed with more marching info that you can shake a marching stick at. This time was soooo much more productive and thus far I’ve managed to record all the drum parts (which included five snare drum parts and a bass drum!) and a melody line which I hummed over a microphone! It’s lots of fun and I’m hoping you’ll be able to hear it once it’s all finished off!
Well, I’d best pack up my bits and bobs and I’m off to Bracknell later to play some tunes. I’ll be at a wonderful venue called The Cellar Bar which is in the big arts centre there looking forward to it!
See ya next week!
• Check out Katie Marie on MySpace, or on her website.
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