Not Bad For A Girl: Practice makes perfect – Katie Marie enjoys good old fashioned practising

By Katie Marie, on Thursday, February 4, 2010

After finally conquering all my TV tracks (Horrah!!) this week has been a funny old one where by not much has happened, but I’ve been running around like a blue-arsed fly!

Well… when I say not much has happened, I mean it’s been more behind-the-scenes type things involving many hours of good old fashioned practising!

I’m very lucky that I have a lovely mixture of musical projects on the go at the moment and with various gigs on the way it was time for me to knuckle down and get some work done…

You may remember from last week’s article that I had my first full band practice with Miquid Licks last Saturday and I’m happy to report that it all went really, really well and band leader Mr Rupert seemed pretty happy with how it all went.

On drums is a wicked little drummer called Ian who is well into his jazz drumming, and I really have to make sure I stay very focused on my bass playing as he wanders off into all sorts of random time signatures without warning!! Don’t get me wrong, it sounds superb, but I have to get that mental metronome going at all times… nothing a wee bit of practising can’t sort out.

I’ll also be meeting up with Dan Crisp later this evening for the first DC band practice of 2010. It’ll also be the first time I’ve played my drum kit this year (other than in my studio, of course!) which is shocking! Still, it’ll be lovely to play through some Dan tunes again as I’ve missed ‘em lots! He’s got oodles of good stuff planned for this year so I’m looking forward to seeing how it all pans out.

Another singer/songwriter I’m currently working with is local lady Nicky Swann, who I’m also playing bass geetar with. I’ve got my first gig with her in Dartmouth next Thursday which I’m really looking forward to!

And then of course… there’s me!! I’ve also been trying to take time out to think about my plans for this year. I’ve got so many wonderful gigs to look forward to like Dartmouth Music Festival in May and then I’ll be popping over to Germany for a few gigs in April and then July…can’t wait!

I’m hoping to record a new EP this year as I’ve got all the material ready, it’s just a case of sitting down and recording it (which is easier said than done!). I’ve also got *loads* of ideas for new tunes, which have a bit more of a funky edge and I’ve also been having a good old mess about with open tunings. I do love the sound people get with DADGAD, but I can’t seem to for the life of me get on with it at all – I mean I can mess about and get some sounds, but nothing that’s as lovely as what I heard other people do!! So I’m currently using a mixture of open D (which is pretty much DADGAD I guess) and my old fav open B – any others you can recommend?

And so last but by no means least on my list of plans is sitting down and have a meeting with my Monkey Moo Records family to decide how we’re going to move things forward – exciting times.

So yeah, all in all it’s been a busy but slightly uneventful week for me! I’ve got a few gigs to do next week – feel free to check out my Myspace page and see where I am when, would be great to see ya!