Not Bad For a Girl: Katie Marie makes her drums sound like new and look pretty swanky

By Katie Marie, on Thursday, June 10, 2010

Howdy lovely peeps! Hope you’ve had a bloomin brill week. Mine has been taken up with a job that most will agree is pretty dull but non-the-less very necessary – yes, I’m talking about *cleaning*. But fear not, it does have a musical theme as I’ve been clearing up my lovely studio.

First things first, I wanted to tackle the live room and get it all clear and ready for recording my new CD (which I’ll be starting very soon, exciting stuff!!). As mentioned in previous articles I’m planning on making this next CD as raw and acoustical as possible. I really love ‘roomy’ sounding recordings which use the natural reverb that a room provides. With this in mind I’ve always left my live room pretty empty as when I’m recording drums the overheads and room mics always sound absolutely gorgeous! Normally I have my lovely Yamaha Stage Custom kit set up for whenever I need to record, but this has had to be all packed away in order to make oodles of room for recording Karon Cajon (boooo!!! hissss!), but hey it’s only temporary.

Before I packed my kits away I decided it would be a great opportunity to do some maintenance and cleaning work to each of the drums. It’s a pretty dull task (especially if you’re like me and you have more than one kit to go through!) but once it’s all done the drums sound like new and look pretty swanky too.

So my drum cleaning process consisted of me taking the skins off, cleaning the shells, polishing the hoops, putting grease on the tension rods (which also involved me getting grease all over the bloomin’ place!) and then tuning all the skins up. It took me most of the day, but it was well worth it as they all sound beautiful, yay!

cleaning drums
Hard at work!

Katie Marie cleaning
Greasing the tension rods, eeeeew!

Katie Marie preparing her studio
All packed away neat and tidy, horrah!

Katie Marie hard at work with Boba Fett watching on
Boba Fett overseeing things…

So now my live room is all ready to go, Karon Cajon sounds absolutely gorgeous in there with the natural room reverb – can’t wait to start recording!

Talking of Karon, I’ve been having another go at some better mic positions after our gig at Exmouth Festy where she was micked up using three different mics and it sounded amazing. I’d love to be able to get as close to that sound as possible and I think we’ve finally cracked it. Unfortunately it involves me using six (yes, six) different microphones dotted around Karon and I have to say it’s turning her into a bit of a Diva!

Our latest combo of mics is as follows:
* SM57 slightly in the sound hole
* AKG D-112 Kick Drum mic about 10″ away from the back of the sound hole
* Sony ECM 22P on the side
* Rode NT1000 Vocal Mic about 10″ away from the front
* 2 Behringer C-2 mics Either side (Left & Right) to give a stereo sound

…seems excessive, but she sounds really cool

Katie Marie's microphones
SM57 & D-112

More of Katie Marie's mircrophones
Front & Side, NT1000, C-2 and my Sony ECM 22P

Yet more of Katie Marie's microphones
Sony ECM 22P, if you see one get it!!

So after a hard day’s work cleaning out the live room and getting all my drums looking and sounding super duper, I thought it only fair that I treat myself to a jam. Ever since I’ve had Karon my poor Conga drums have been sat in the corner of my mixing room looking very sorry for themselves. So I thought it would be fun to try and come up with some grooves that feature both Karon and my Conga drums… at the same time! After a bit of practice I managed to find a couple of really fun things to play, but bloomin eck it made my poor little brain hurt! I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to record my noodlings this week and hopefully play em to ya in next week’s article

Katie Marie's Cajon and conga drums
Karon hanging out with Carla and Carlos Conga Drum

Well that’s it for this week, big thankies to all who came along to Mama Stone’s last night. I was gigging with Miquid Licks and it was a really good fun evening, hope you enjoyed it too!