Hello, my name is Katie, I am 18 years old, Canadian and my pronouns are she/her. I have been playing guitar since I was 10 years old. Since then I have picked up 2 years of piano experience, and 4 years singing experience. I’ve always composed music, first in my head as a child and then on guitar since I first picked up the instrument. I write primarily on guitar and piano, the rest I hear in my head transpose to guitar/piano.
I’ve always had an aptitude with picking out pieces of audio, I used to hear full orchestra arrangements in my head composing a song and I would pick out individual sections.
I’ve become quite proficient at dissecting compositions I hear in my head in order to learn them on piano or guitar. I cannot read or write sheet music or tabs but that hasn’t inhibited my ability to learn music and catalogue it. I learn everything by ear and pick up most songs within minutes. I train my ear by tuning by ear and constantly playing.
I have been singing for about 4 years seriously (everybody sings) and in March 2024 I began taking singing lessons through Singer’s Edge in Toronto to work on my technique, and have developed a decent amount of confidence as a result.
In terms of guitar playing style I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from Nick Drake, Hozier, Lindsay Buckingham, and Mark Knopfler. Using fingerpicking techniques and also incorporating rasgueado style flamenco strumming to attempt to fill out my sound as a solo artist.
For piano I lean more towards composing weird chord structures with chords on the right hand and octaves on the left, usually not playing the root of the chord because that’s usually boring. Unless you’re Elton John. I play a lot of Beach Boys on piano, my current favourite is Surfs Up.
And for singing style I sit mostly in a contralto range, with some low baritone notes in my chest and decently Bee Gees notes in my head voice (singing style).
My artistic influences are Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys) Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), Daniel Johnston, Neil Young, and The Cardiacs. My favourite composer is Tchaikovsky although Shostakovich might take that spot soon.
Treblecock Recording Studio
