Not Bad For A Girl: Katie Marie picks apart her petite piano

By Katie Marie, on Thursday, February 11, 2010

Blimey! What a crazy but very productive week I’ve had… how’s yours been?

As with last week I’ve had lots of days of practising various musical bits ‘n’ bobs and hey, guess what? I actually started writing a new song! Not a random TV tune, an actual *Katie* song! Horrah!

Currently it’s a bit like a cross between Jack Johnson and Ani Difranco with a weeny but of Jewel added in there for good measure. I was also really chuffed that I was able to use one of my fav items in my studio:

It's not a table, it's Katie Marie's piano!

Which may just look like a nice table, but it is in fact…

Katie Marie reveals her piano

…a mini piano!

And as with most musical items I’ve bought over the years there is a story attached to how I came to buy this wonderful little thing…

Last July I happened to be walking past an auction room and spotted in the window what looked like a rather old and decrepit piano. I crossed over the road to have a closer look and before I knew it, I was in the showroom! The piano hadn’t really been looked after very well and was in a bit of a state.

As you may or may not know one of my many jobs when I was younger was working in a piano shop repairing and restoring pianos (which was really good fun!), and so usually when I see a piano in a bit of a state I want to take it home and give it some TLC. But most pianos are *huge* and I’ve never had enough room to store one, but this one was perfect! It only measures around two-and-a-half feet long and has fold up legs! Perfect. So I went to find someone who worked in the auction house to see when it would be up for auction.

‘Yep that piano is up for auction tomorrow,’ the guy told me. Damn! I was busy all the next day so I was forced to leave a bid – I really didn’t have a clue how much to leave and I couldn’t afford to pay too much but I knew I’d be really gutted if it went to someone else! So I left £70 thinking/hoping that would be more than enough and that no-one other than me would be stupid enough to pay that much for a knackered piano! lol

So the next day arrived, and I nervously waited till 1pm when the auction had finished to ring up and find out if I’d got the piano.

‘Oh yes you were the highest bidder. In fact you were the only bidder – so you got it for £10.’

So as I’m sure you can imagine I was I was very chuffed indeed!

I went and collected it later on that day and was really looking forward to taking it to bits (sad I know!)

It’s probably the most interesting piano I’ve worked on and also one of the most difficult, as it was absolutely nothing like any other piano I’ve ever worked on before – why? First off it’s got no strings, and secondly all the hammers work in a weird upside down kind of way, which totally threw me! But when you took it all apart and understood it a bit better it did all make sense (well in the end! lol)

Katie Marie is a former piano fixer

Katie Marie, little piano fixing

Katie Marie's piano tune

The really kewl thing about this piano is that it’ll never go out of tune because there’s no strings to tune (yay!). When you press a key the hammer attached to the key hits a metal note (kind of like a xylophone) and it has a weird kind of harp type tone to it, which happened to be perfect for my new song!

Talking of bits of equipment for my studio, I’ve had ooodles of peeps ask me how my Cajon fund is going (as you may remember me rabbiting on before Crimbo about wanting to buy one) and I have to say the fund isn’t as big as I’d hoped (but that might have something to do with me raiding it several times!!) but it’s defo still in the pipeline, so watch this space.

And if you get a mo you can check out a vid on Youtube that’s just been uploaded it features me playing a Cajon with two lovely German peeps!

It’s from my very last gig in Germany where there were a couple of guys playing a set before me (AB & JB) and I thought it would be good fun to get up at the end and have a good old fashioned jam. This particular vid is a song we made up on the spot (as I’m sure you’ll be able to tell!) and there’s a solo from me about halfway through – blagged big time as it was my first time on a Cajon! We had so much fun.

Well I’d best get back to work – I’ll be doing my first Acoustic PM radio show of 2010 next Wednesday (February 17) on Soundart Radio between 5-6pm so tune in if you’re around!