Family

Ashton Vaudt

Iʼve been involved with music for nearly all 24 years Iʼve been alive, starting with church choirs, then moving on to instrument studies. I started playing the cello in fifth grade, and always found my way into the higher chairs of the higher orchestras in the Hampton Roads, Virginia area. After a while, the cello just didnʼt seem to be challenging enough, so I decided to pick up the guitar after watching my brother play some chords. This was in 1999, and I have not put the guitar down since, as Iʼm always coming across new artists to listen to and new techniques to learn and practice.

My initial guitar hero was (and of course, still is) Eric Clapton. I loved his melodies and arrangements, and would always play them the most as they were quite simple to play solo. Over the years, I started fiddling with just writing instrumentals, wondering if there was a market for it. Naturally, I discovered Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, and was blown away at what the guitar was able to do. I then tried to emulate the things Iʼd hear them doing (Iʼm still trying to nail down Vaiʼs “Bad Horsie”). It was around this time I finally started putting together my recording rig.

I enrolled at Shenandoah University in 2006, majoring in Music Production and Recording Technology, as my love for recording started to outweigh the love of performing. I did, however, also study jazz while in school, and later came across the work of Pat Metheny (many, many others, of course, but Metheny stands out the most for me). I noticed that my playing and writing technique almost started to combine all of my different influences into this new sound (which is hopefully evident on the accompanying track). I graduated in 2010, spent a year in Nashville interning at Creative Caffeine Studios there, and subsequently moved back to Hampton Roads.

While in college, I learned of Steven Slate Drums, and started to find all sorts of audio samples to see what it was all about. Like so many others, I was just amazed at the quality of the samples. However, like other college students, financial priorities laid elsewhere, and while I still plan on picking up SSD for myself, other things must come first.

Other things, of course, being Slate Digitalʼs plug-ins. I was one of the many engineers waiting ever so patiently for the full version of VCC, so I tried out (and bought) FG-X to occupy my time. I could not believe the transparency of FG-X, and started telling EVERYONE about it. At the same time, I was taking a closer look at Trigger, and without even owning it for now, canʼt believe the flexibility and power that if offers. I promise, Steve, I WILL own it one day! Iʼm still having too much fun with VCC. Iʼve found that I much prefer both the API and Trident settings, with Drive at max!

– Ashton Vaudt

Ashton Vaudt - "First Kiss" (Written, Performed, and Mixed by Ashton Vaudt) by Slate Family