Where:
Coventry, England
Who:
Guitar, Vocals, Keyboards, Bass, MIDI Drums by
David Addis
When:
David Addis has played with a number of bands
since the age of 15 when he started learning the bass guitar. A year later
he picked up his first 6-string and formed his own band, playing a mixture
of covers and original songs. Now David is at university, and plays with
20" Ride, a rock and blues
band in Coventry
Why:
He likes it.
What:
Instrumental Guitar Rock.
In
Short:
Influences are Extreme, Van Halen, Satch,
Neil Zaza, SRV and Steve Vai.
Albums -
Guitar 2 Drum, 2000
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David
Addis
by Alessandro De Murtas
Featured
Songs:
Bass Control
Uplift
Turtle Moon
(..) My name is David Addis
and I live in Coventry, England. I'm 19 and I've been playing with
quite a few bands over the last 5 years. I started learning the bass
guitar and ended up in all my friend's bands, but rarely liked the
style of music we played. Later I formed my own band, but still found
it hard to reproduce what I heard in my head. Still, we kept practicing
and by the time it was my last gig with my band at secondary school
(before we left for university) we'd actually got pretty good, and
were paid for some gigs in pubs. After a year at uni I discovered
n-Track recorder, and found I could make some high-quality home recordings.
Last summer I recorded an album with a friend of mine, Michael Whiteman,
who used to play drums for my old band. We became MaD
(if you know what I mean) and hosted 'Consequences' on mp3.com.
Since we both go to different universities, I can't do any work with
him during term-time and I'm playing around with some solo work.
It's exactly the sort of music I want to make, and I get to do everything
my way. That must sound a bit egotistical, but I'm sure Mr. Steve
Vai would agree it's the way to go.
Tips and Tricks from David
Addis using n-Track Studio. |
(..)
At home I record on my PIII
850 using n-Track Studio (16-bit) and just record through a
SB card line input, with no multitrack recording. I record mostly
guitar tracks, which come from a Line 6 POD, which is very versatile
(with all manner of inputs and outputs) and has an enormous
library of guitar sounds. I can also hook this up to my PC to
fiddle with my sound, and I've made quite a few I'm happy with,
like a deep metal guitar (possibly my favourite), a high-gain
brit rocker, a tough SRV sound and some nice clean sounds as
well. I record bass guitar through the POD as well - it's not
really meant for it, but one of the amp models includes a bass
amp people started to use for guitar, and it works quite well
considering how much I can tweak it. When I record vocals, I
occassionally use the POD but found it's actually best to just
put it through some sort of pre-amp (like a small 'notebook'
Mike had). Drums (on my solo project) are all done by writing
them out on Piano roll in n-Track Studio. I think Flavio has
done a really good job incorporating midi instruments into n-Track
and I've become pretty quick at getting the drum beat in my
head onto the computer. My sound card (just about) does the
drums justice, even if it's not quite as fluent as a real drummer
(hey, at least it doesn't make mistakes).
I use FASoft Compressor quite a lot, perhaps too much actually,
but I do find it makes mixing instruments a hell of a lot easier,
and it means vocals can actually be recorded completely dry
if necessary. Often, after I have mixed down a song I actually
reimport it to n-Track and give it a bit more compression for
luck, it's quite easy to let some of your songs fall below a
few db for a whole verse of chorus unless you painstakingly
play with the mix and program the levels - although this feature
can come in handy at times if you want to emphasize a particular
instrument. Programming the pan can also create some nice effects.
A serious tip to programming drums is to write out a sample
verse or chorus on the piano roll, then go back to normal track
view. Slap on the grid and copy and paste until the song is
filled out. Some people might just leave it, but I would definitely
recommend diving in and changing a fill here, a cymbal crash
here, and so on - it really does make a difference. |
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