Kit Marsden // Musician

Blog

  • Ten Year Challenge

    Ten Year Challenge

    Kit Marsden

    It feels like only yesterday that I wrote a ten-year retrospective, looking back on a decade of working in music. But that was, in fact, a whole two years ago!

    But over on social media, the #TenYearChallenge is all the rage. Clearly, I have always been ahead of the times… But I thought I would jump on that particular bandwagon, of an evening, and see where it takes me.

    It’s actually been a lot of fun, looking for photos from gigs and sessions from ten years ago – just marginally before smartphones were ubiquitous, and everybody began to photograph everything – thinking about what has changed in that time, and what has stayed the same.

    I still have the t-shirt I’m wearing onstage with Witchers at the Cambridge Haymarket in 2009 (although the arm tattoo visible in the 2019 picture is a much more recent addition). The orange Premier Series kit moved on a couple of years later, when I became an official Carrera Drums Ambassador in 2011 – but I’m still rocking the unusual ‘equilateral triangle’ drum kit setup on the majority of my gigs, and I am still a proud endorser of Pellwood Drumsticks.

    Playing with Cardiem was the first time I ever sang with a band – backing vocals, and then some lead vocals too.

  • Lack Of Updates

    Lack Of Updates

    Kit Marsden

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    I don’t generally make ‘New Years resolutions’ – but one thing I did want to do as of the start of this year was to update this page more, and be more active here. So far, not so good…!

    So what has been going on? Lots of work with Sistema in various local schools, which I am still enjoying and finding really rewarding. And lots of gigs with Ultra ’90s – in all it’s various flavours (Original, Fresh and Jam), both on drums/percussion and as a keys player and MD.

    And in between all of that, we have had the eleventh annual Keyboard Camp this year, just one week ago. (More on that in a later post…) And I have been trying to get my studio setup and fully functional at my new house!

    Beginnings of the new studio
    Beginnings of the new studio

    Having moved house at the end of summer last year, it has taken a little while to move all my gear across and start to get myself familiar with the new studio space. The big plan for this year is to get my recording work properly up-and-running, so I am going to try and start pushing that online a little more as I get everything finalised.

  • Ten Years, No Day Job

    Ten Years, No Day Job

    Kit Marsden

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    March 2017 is something of a landmark for me, so here is a short piece of writing (and a few old pictures) all about it.

    Cardiem live on BBC Radio Norfolk, 2009
    Cardiem live on BBC Radio Norfolk, 2009.

    It was back in March 2007 that I officially declared myself ‘a professional musician’. Nothing materially changed for having said it, of course – I was still doing one gig every few months, teaching two or three private students, and earning very little – but it meant something to have said it, to have ‘made it official’. It was a line in the sand.

    'Loading' the van – on tour with Axel Loughrey, 2010
    ‘Loading’ the van – on tour with Axel Loughrey, 2010.

    I registered myself officially self-employed not long later (although it would be another couple of years before I was earning enough for that to have any real tax implications), and I joined the Musicians’ Union. And I resolved not to give in to any of the pressures to get a ‘real job’ (even just while I was building up my income from music).

    In the ten years since then, I have gone from intermittent gigs and two or three students to having a thriving business gigging, recording, teaching, writing and arranging music (and – yes – doing actual tax returns).

  • SEYO Day 3: Tutti Rehearsals

    SEYO Day 3: Tutti Rehearsals

    Kit Marsden

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    We’ve now been in Milan at the SEYO Summer Camp for three full days (and when I say ‘full’, I really do mean that – they have been three long, intense, full-on, exhausting days!), and it really is a fascinating experience.

    A few things have mainly struck me so far…  The standard of the students participating is very high – in the advanced orchestra, where I am working with the percussion section, we have been able to focus on little details, points of technique, performance advice, and other minutiae, almost right from the start.  The students are all excellent players already, and this makes for very interesting, dynamic sectional rehearsals with a lot of ideas being thrown around and a real rehearsal process being very much in evidence!

    The incredible passion and enthusiasm of all the teaching staff is also plain to see.  Given the number of different countries participating, and the fact that as a team of tutors, many of us had never met each other before and we have just been thrown together from different Sistema-inspired projects across all of Europe (each with their own, slightly different, customs and ways of doing things!), I think we have gelled pretty well.  From my point-of-view, I feel privileged to be working alongside a fantastic percussion tutor in sectionals, and under conductors in full rehearsals who really know what they want from a piece of music and have a vision for the performance.

  • Touring Setup With Ultra ’90s

    Touring Setup With Ultra ’90s

    Kit Marsden

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    I wanted to write a little bit about the gear I am using on the road with live ’90s dance music show Ultra ’90s this summer, and share some of the reasoning behind why I’m playing this setup and why it suits this show so well. Here we are in setup at Golden Coast in Woolacombe, Devon, from behind the kit:

    Ultra '90s at Golden Coast
    Ultra ’90s at Golden Coast

    The kit I’m using is my Carrera custom ‘Sound’ kit with an 18×14″ bass drum and 10×6″ and 14×10″ toms; it’s perfect for touring, as it’s small and lightweight (which helps in reducing the strain on the stalwart Ultra ’90s van which has to carry to the entire rig from place to place!) thanks to the thin birch shells, but the toms still have good projection despite their shallow depth. The toms are also close mic’ed with Sennheiser E604 drum mics. The bass drum is fitted with a mesh head, and all the bass drum sounds are triggered with a Roland RT-10K, going into an Alesis DM5 module.

    I’m using two snare drums here – my 14×5.5″ steambent maple Carrera Tunkan Ingan prototype is my main snare, but I also have a 12×5″ Mapex hammered steel snare as an auxiliary snare.

  • Sistema Europe Summer School In Milan

    Kit Marsden

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    I am delighted to have been chosen to be one one of the tutors going to this year’s Sistema Europe Summer Camp, which is being held in Milan, Italy; a colleague from Sistema in Norwich and I will be going with a delegation from Sistema England, to work for eight days with students and other tutors from Sistema-inpired projects based across Europe.

    This is a very exciting opportunity for me to work with some fantastic music professionals and to learn from them – and to be more involved with the Sistema movement as a whole, to just here in Norwich but throughout Europe.

    Keep checking back here after 21st August for more updates on my time working with the Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra in Italy, and all the wonderful activities we get up to!

  • Grade Exams And Musicianship

    Kit Marsden

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    I have thought about doing this for a while, now. I want to write a little bit about music exams, my approach to them as a music tutor, and why I feel they are a valuable part of music education.

    There often seems to be something of a divide in the music world about grade exams. Plenty of people I know have criticised the system, saying that exams are unnecessary; I suppose this is true, insofar as it is possible to be an extremely good player without ever having taken an exam – then again, you could say it’s not strictly ‘necessary’ to insure your musical instruments against damage or theft either, but it’s still pretty useful!

    Another major criticism I sometimes come across when talking about exam work is that the system is flawed because music – like all art – is inherently subjective, and so can’t truly be ‘judged’ by anyone else. Again, there is some truth in this; the various exam boards (I currently use Trinity, ABRSM and Rockschool) do an excellent job of ensuring their examiners adhere to very strict guidelines about judging performances, and ensuring a high level of consistency of marking across the board – but yes, despite this, there will always been an element of subjectivity.

Kit Marsden // Musician