Not Bad For A Girl: From fluffly slippers to 60s rock 'n' roll

By PRSD, on Thursday, January 21, 2010

Katie Marie captures the 60s stylee this week with thrilling attention to detail. Rock on, Katie!

My week has been filled with a large eclectic mix of recording work which has been very challenging but oodles of fun. As you’ll see from my studio book I’ve had a wide variety of genres thrown at me:

The deadline for which my TV tunes need to completed by is growing ever closer and I really need to get my skates on if I’m going to get everything done in time!

I really enjoyed writing and recording an Electronic song – I wanted to experiment mixing electronic keyboard synth sounds with acoustic drums. The result was meant to be a Hardcore Electronic tune, but it turned out to be about as Hardcore as my fluffy pink slippers. I have to say, I really love the song, it’s very Peter Gabriel (which is always good, me thinks!).

So after my Fluffy Electronic tune I had to then move onto 60s Pop (I know, talk about one extreme to the other!). I’ve played in many blues and 60s style bands in the past and had a rough idea of what I was going to write… the main problem was how to make it sound as authentic as poss.

I waded through my mother’s CD collection for some inspiration…

Katie Marie's inspiration

…and began writing!

I thought I’d get the drums out the way early on, but my lovely live room really didn’t have the sort of sound I needed and although it made my kit sound great it wasn’t… 60s.

So I had to grab my drums and attempt to squeeze everything into the recording room, which was a challenge to say the very least! But after years of living in a tiny mobile home with music gear set up all around, I’m well trained at this sort of thing! Trying to arm the tracks on the recorder and pressing the record button was a mission… but it’s a good job I’ve got long arms.

So ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.… I give you – my makeshift 60s drum kit!

It’s also very handy that my studio is an old stable block and there’s a rather nifty little hook in the ceiling where they would have hung hay bails. This is just perfect if you want to hang any mics overhead!

After micing the kit up in what I hoped was a 60s style, it was time to get down to recording.

It took me a little while to get my 60s drummer head on… as it’s pretty much playing the opposite of my normal playing style! It’s not necessarily about following the bass player or guitarist, but more providing a lovely solid groove that drives the song along. There’s lots of tasty snare rolls involved and you have to keep a really straight beat going which can be hard to stick to!

So on the bass guitar front I enlisted the help of an old friend who was actually there! My 60s Eko bass:

Which sounded bloomin’ brilliant!

My idea was to have a summery surfy style riff going the both bass and geetar were playing, which seemed to work ok (thankfully!!).

On the guitar front I used a Strat sound on my trusty Line 6 Electric that I had going through my magical Line 6 Guitar POD. I had the POD recreating an AC30 amp (I used to have an original AC30 which I miss
dearly, but that’s a story for another time!

So now I’d finished the recording I just needed to get down to the tricky bit – mixing! This was were I had to try and make the song sound as 60s as possible, which is easier said than done!

If you’re familiar with old school tunes, you’ll know that back in them days they used to pan all the instruments completely to the left or right as they didn’t have as many channels to play with as we do today. Also they used enough reverb to sink a battleship (and all who know me know how much I love reverb… erm, not!).

They also used a pretty interesting way to get reverb on each instrument, seeing as how they didn’t have a million different pre-sets at the touch of a button like us lucky folk do! To get this reverby sound they used to have a room (usually in the basement of the studio) where they had a mic and speaker set up. They used to send the sound of each instrument to the speaker and have the mic coming in on a different channel and that channel would be the reverb. So as an experiment I set up a similar sort of thing in my live room and it really did work a treat! Not only did it make everything sound really retro but it also sounded like it had all been played live, bonus!

So it’s all written, recorded and mixed. Now all I need to do is send it off to the big boss man for a yay or nay – wish me luck!

Next on my list? Funk rock – oh yeah!! Now we’re talking!

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