jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

AMP

THE gain stage

I can't do anymore basic vacuum tube electronics. I feel like its derailing the thread. There are amps you can attenuate worry free. There are amps that don't lose tone at moderate levels of attenuation. Safety is very dependent on the quality of the attenuator conponents and how overengineered it is.

An ac30 style amp with a half power switch can be used in some homes, just maybe not at brian may settings. It doesn't drop 50% of the volume, much of which is dictated by speaker sensitivity, but it takes the headroom down a bit. That said, I usually just talk to my neighbors when I want to record my 1962 ac30 above 11o'clock in my home studio and work it out with them. Below that level its 'clean' in a really rich, almost overdriven sense if the word and is plenty satisfying. It is nice to gun it in a band setting once in awhile. It's the perfect band volume for me. The OP mentioned LARGE bar gigs. An ac15 might cut it, any smaller and there better be good wedges and a solid PA. I did recommend an ac15, marshall 18 ir a deluxe reverb and the ac30 I recommended can disable 2 tubes for 15-18ish watts with a little more projection available from the 2 speakers in a big cab.

I love ac30s.

I would not recommend people use an attenuator on a hot cathode biased el84 amp like an ac30. People do it but it's not a great idea in my opinion as a tech.

Be careful handing out purely experiential info, tube amps contain lethal voltages. Everything seems safe until something goes wrong and you can never predict when your luck will run out.

No problem. Maybe look up the van halen wet dry wet rig if you're intent on stereo.

You've said in the past that, for you personally, you feel like a lot of the value that you offer the artists you work with is access to higher-end/legit studio gear and your thorough working knowledge of that gear -- and that you feel the gear drives as much or more of your value prop as your ears and talents do. So I'm keeping that in mind as I ponder all this.

Percieved value. It never hurts to let the artist think they're only a couple racks of gear and a little patience away from being able to do without you. Honesty hurts feelings. You just let people figure things out on their own. Someone I'm currently working for has flipped script completely as I repair recording faux pas just to get to the mix phase. He went from"im sure my friends with scarlet interfaces could do what you do if you swapped gear, I'm renting your studio," to, "damn, why did I think that hum was okay? Thanks for removing it and declicking my bad edits! Did I accidentally record a stereo source in mono? You made it work okay?! Wow that's so much better when you do those little gain rides before a compressor, I actually sound like a singer. How can you tell you need to change that just by watching the meters? Aren'tthey just to avoid clipping?"

So percieved value. Sometimes you just let people come around. No one thinks there's anything to this anymore, but doing it well ain't that easy. And I'm just a journeyman, learning every project. A lot if it is gear advertising. They're selling the idea that their products are the whole solution regardless of the designer's intent. Ya gotta sell thenew doodad regardless of the real world use case scenario. Its been going on since I've been in audio. That said, just using my modest cobsole, the routing facilities have really been making my life easier this week so there's something to a good centerpiece. I mean, try reamping with a reversed passive DI without a big fader to attenuate the recorded signal. You dam sorta do it but fir this project I have channels 31 and 32 permanently setup for guitar and bass reamping as needed. Everything is gain staged and routed where it needs to be and I can tweak a little gain or use channel eq into an amp without having to stress it screw with the parts of the mix I like so far. Or I can get clever with inserts and auxes to add studio fx that far outclass any stomp the client has. Just easier. Holy rambling diatribe, batman!

I totally get the dream of having a forever-console to cherish, lovingly maintain, and subtly wow people with, but if we're talking about investing in yourself and your business, is this really the best way to spend $50k?

Not for me. The temptation passes quickly. See, it would require financing and a lot of faith that I will do enough business to pay it back while turning a profit. It's unlikely that a fancy desk will attract enough viable new business to justify the risk. If I were to go in for a desk like this it would be based on some windfall and would be more for more own personal satisfaction.

It will still be mono. The power amp is mono. Any signals summed to the power amp will be mono even if you use both speaker outs. They are parallel mono outputs.

In order to get true stereo you will need 2 identical amps or a single preamp and a stereo power amp... there are other solutions too but every method to achieve stereo fx will require more gear than you gave at your disposal. Additionally, running stereo from a stereo cabinet is only workable if both sides are mixed into the PA leaving your stereo fx in the hands of the sound guy. Your stage volume will lose its stereo imaging by the time it reaches an audience unless you have 2 cabinets fairly well spaced. When I indulged in thus kind of excess I had 4×12s spaced on opposite sides of the stage and in larger theaters wide panned in the PA l.

Gain Stage is important when buying an AMP , 1st its important for the sound you looking for, and 2nd it is important to look out for if you want to crank the AMP , there are some you will not play at home at all, so you always have to respect the Gain Stage in Mind when buying an AMP

These words mean nothing. Gain is 'gain in voltage.' Any component that acts as a small signal voltage amplifier is a gain stage on this context. It can have an amplification factor of 1, basically a fancy buffer, still a gain stage. There are guitar amps with many gain stages but due to intervening features of the circuit they do not deliver more gain in voltage than a single 12ax7 produces. There is more to a circuit than number of preamplifier gain stages. Amplification factor and intervening sources of voltage attenuation have far more impact on the point at which a guitar amp will segue intopreamp or power amp distortion than just the number of small signal amplifiers in series, to say nothing of preamps designed to distort... if you're talking about distortion, many times "high gain amps" throw away much of their gain in voltage and much of the preamp distortion us produced by a cold biased triode designed to clip asymmetrically. This "gain stage" typically has little to no gain in voltage and high internal negative feedback as it is not customary to bypass the cathode with a capacitor to ground for tonal reasons. A vox ac30 is literally incapable of producing preamp distortion from any channel but the top boost unless you put a line driver out front to overload the input (and the top boost is not capable of producing very much distortion of it's own not unlike a plexi or bassman preamp), there'sno intervening stage to distort before the power section. All of the distortion comes from the power section if using a non top boost input and most if using a top boost, much of it from the phase inverter and some from the el84s. The long tailed pair produces a moderate amount of gain in voltage versus other phase splitters, so perhaps it can be thought of as a gain stage but that voltage boost is needed to drive the power amp (look up a cathodyne phase inverter which has no gain, it requires an extra driver stage to drive a push pull amp). Is this what you're getting at? I'm thinking it is but your comments are somewhat misleading. The entire circuit has to be looked at. Counting preamp tubes means nothing without context.

I'm not being sarcastic. You gave plenty of fx.

I forgot about Espen. Whether you're a synthwave guy or not (and I'm not), espen is a really informative guy and a good player. Having gotten to know him on social media I can tell you he's way wittier than he comes off in his videos:

https://youtube.com/@EspenKraft?si=7SmUmA82hHEDAqx8

Only up until about 2021, now urban white collar WFH types want to pay crazy money for those homes.

Is this why Hidden Valley is getting so expensive?

All the 25 secrets of their spices are falling into place at last.

I'm gonna have to drive half way to San Diego, I suspect)

Or all the way... I can think of places in California I like less.

Maybe your proximity to Japan will be helpful... japanese fender is thin on the ground here though

Yeah, but it's an exceedingly high-quality overview, IMHO. A lovely salmon and spinach salad in a sea of iceberg & ranch offerings.

Do you suppose they grind up midwestern houses as the basis for ranch seasoning blend? It would explain a lot.

One thing I've found in the studio is that every big bass amp (or bass friendly guitar amp) sounds more like it should through an SVT 8×10... even just placing a mic on 1 speaker, the coupling from the whole system really works. But you need a free ISO booth if you're tracking the rhythm section live. Gobos won't cut it.

I don't know how I resisted the urge to reply to a thread called "I'm looking for an amp" by asking the OP if he remembered the last place he saw it.

One thing to ask yourself is how you think the amp will sound in the mix with a microphone on the speaker because that's how everyone but you will hear it, whether live or on your recordings. If you can test that out before buying, then do so. It's a big investment. Hit up a good store and make yourself a nuisance. If they want your business they'll work to make the sale and have you return for your next gear purchase because you're still so satisfied with the amp you purchased.

Go somewhere that deals vintage gear so you can compare the new stuff.

And disregard whatever you read from Hashimoto up there about "the gain stage." He doesn't know what he's talking about, just repeating junk he's heard. If you want to know more about vacuum tubes, small signal preamplifier and power amplifier topologies I can break it down for you in a mostly math free way. Most people g ou ave over though and go " gain stages? Gain stages." A hiwatt for example has 3 gain stages but us clean as a whistle because it throws a lot of the potential gain voltage away via small 47nf cathode bypass caps, lossy tone controls and voltage dividers. Everything is circuit dependent.

Yeah, when I was younger I would play with huge heavy stuff and I think my band was the only band in Philly that never got ganked. Plexis, showmans, an SVT with the fridge cab. No one wanted to deal with the logistics of stealing stuff like that. Heavy and... CONSPICUOUS in a world of mesas...

None of that wss news to me being an old school rivethead but I gave it the 5jumvsup because it was pretty good. Great info for kids raised post-Reznor... man do I love his soundtrack output lately.

If we're recommending boutique amps don't forget Dr. Z. Mike is a great guy and I like every Dr Z model I've tried. The Ghia is pretty sweet. Then there's a slew of ac30 derived amps with Brad paisley's wreck and candy panels as the benchmark as well as weird vox/fender hybrids. His prices are reasonable as these fancy man brands go. If I needed a new amp I probably would start with the Z line.

I've only ever tried 1 Morgan with a pentode channel back when they first started turning up used and I don't remember being that impressed. Definitely was more into the classic Matchless DC30 for the ef86 thing... which I'm just not as excited about as I used to be. No one makes a good ef86 anymore anyway. If you dont have some NOS, don't bother. All the new ones literally sound dull in an ac15 type preamp. I dont know why.

The OP could also build an amp. Always fun.

The lakland might be easier to find for a hands on audition than the right cij fender P. I think you may have your answer.

I'm really not sure.

It's competitively priced with the SSL origin, Trident 88 and the Audient 8024. None of those double as a dante interface (though they gave other unique features), which is a really cool feature, especially since Harrison's converters are first rate having been developed for their digital film/broadcast desks that are still an industry standard (a rare achievement in audio).

The SSL origin makes no sense to me either. Its like a stripped down E series. None of the groundbreaking SSL features.

I will say that the big 100mm faders look to be mounted in standard panels so theoretically you could buy drop in Flying Faders now that AMS Neve no longer owns them... get a Tangerine DAW interface for them and your Harrison 32classic has automated faders if not recall. At that total cost you could buy a fully tricked out RND 5088 and use your own converters. Anyone looking at the harrison already has converters they really like that meet the needs of their business. Or do they?

Maybe the idea is that this desk would be the centerpiece of a scratch built studio that could grow around it. Now I'm thinking about how I can save up for one of these and redo my whole studio ground up.... its not like I'm not constantly fiddling with things.

An ac30 with blue speakers us loud, it can keep up with a 50 watt plexi Marshall or blonde/blackface bassman no problem. Look at an ac15hw2. It's got enough projection for most venues and can be dialed down for home use as long as you dont play late at night - sounds pretty decent, its a half size ac30, if you want a real ac15 they don'tmake an accurate version anymore (or a proper ac10)... if your back is strong buy an ac30hw2. It's not fun to carry but it's also not easy to steal. I have one. It mostly keeps up with my '62 and has some useful features like a defeatable post phase inverter master, half power and a hot mode for the top boost channel if you want to be Brian may but forgot your treble booster... no vibrato channel though.

A marshall 18 watt reissue or clone is also a good choice if you'reconsidering el84 amps. Straddles the vox and Marshall sound.

EDIT Both these amps can be finicky with stomp boxes.

You also can't go wrong with a fender deluxe reverb. The silver reissue is the best bang for buck in current production. Has a few common mods to vintage ones as stock. If you can find one, the ampeg jet j20 from about 20 years ago is actually a brown deluxe based circuit and sounds pretty great.

In old amps you might enjoy a fender bandmaster rig, not the most popular fender head so its affordable - it's got a tight bass end and a steely twang that transitions into respectable cowboy crunch around 5 on the volume... the channels are in phase and can be jumpered like a plexi, unlike other blackface amps. Not particularly loud but can reach the back row in a small theater.

A blackface princeton paired with a small tweed like a fender deluxe, Harvard, Gibson titan, lancer, ranger etc can be a formidable rig.

Composers on Composing

• https://www.youtube.com/@DBruce

• https://www.youtube.com/@ImpliedMusic

I'm checking those out once I survive Halloween with my kid.

Facepalm

Just found a great channel this week where a guy blew my mind on EQing a Shure SM57 to sound exactly like an SM7B, which made me wonder; What else am I missing?

And the shure sm7b uses essentially the same capsule (slightly hot rodded himbucking version) as a 57/58 (the 7b speech mode is the 58 presence peak, flat us the 57). Its the housing, venting and transformerless output that gives it the reduced proximity and somewhat extended top. I had no idea you didn't know that. You can take the output transformer out of a 57 and remove the mesh screen for a more open, 7b type sound but you'll also get the 7b reduced output, an average loss of about 5db... you'll need a nice hot pre to make it up for vocals unless you've got a screamer. Or one of those goofy cloud lifters all the kids think they need. If you just take shit apart you don't need YouTube.

EDIT: also, all but a few multi pattern shure condensers use the same basic small diaphragm back electret capsule as the venerable sm81 (not a bad thing, I live the 81) including the fixed pattern side address ksm that looks like an LDC (it has slightly different sound but the same ruler flat off axis rejection and is my favorite sax mic)

Agreed... his rants make me laugh but I also don't always agree or even care. I also don't like the way that on top of his YouTube revenue he sells digital books. It seems pretty clear he's not really that successful anymore as a producer (who us yhoygh?) and probably overextended himself on that gorgeous studio and that his internet fanbase is actually keeping the studio lights on. That said, he understands music and sound better than anyone else shilling YouTube advice. Like I said, love/hate. I would probably have a drink with him if I ran into him somewhere.

I'll admit that sometimes me and my friends put on youtube 'producer' videos while we drink tequila and heckle them in faux mexican accents... or vodka and Russian accents. The commie jokes are the money but who likes drinking straight vodka?

I've always been poor, I have to be a gear pirate and a part time tech in order to have a private studio I enjoy working in. Not everything needs to be expensive. I get called a snob on equipboard, but I just love gear that does a job really well, hopefully with a bit more style than a plugin. Price isn't a factor though. An FMR RNC costs about the price of a fancy pedal and i own like 6 of them. It's a Really Nice Compressor. Many times it beats a dbx 160 or even an 1176. Plus, when I had too many to rack, I got rid of a few on facebook marketplace rather than buy another rack kit and shop for a 9th one... and I didn't lose a penny because people who know just know. Theres always a buyer fir something good. That's how gear accumulation happens.

I have a love/hate relationship with rick beato. Otherwise I only go on youtube when I need to fix an appliance. I'll bet my son has some opinions... he lives for internet videos.

That's a holdover from the earliest days of equipboard. I concur with you, but I don't think I have the ability to change it. We need an admin. Mods don't actually have a lot of powers.

https://harrisonaudio.com/products/32-classic-console

So rather than dismantle Harrison after buying the company, SSL has overseen the release of a new, mid/large format analog console for MUSIC from one of their oldest US competitors...

This thing is a split/inline beast based on the 3232c famously used for Thriller. They added ADDA conversion over dante and 8 analog busses for subgrouping. It's got THE eq. There are transformers where you want them.... this thing is a direct competitor to the SSL Origin with very similar features and if true to the original Harrison formula, a sound most people will prefer to even a 4000E.

However, it costs a good 50k... but per Harrison's rep I spoke to, there's no automation package?! And no plans to offer one at this time? This makes complex mixes a multi-operator affair. It also makes the channel inserts useless for compression if you automate DAW faders. And no patchbay on a big console at this price point? I'm baffled by this one, just like the Origin that omits automation and the channel compressors, 2 of my favorite things about working on am SSL (it's not the sound or even the EQ). At least give me the vca fader automation if the originals, SSL/Harrison. These are huge investments. You can get a car for what one costs... ommiting automation on a large format mixer??? it's like if I paid for a new car with no cruise control. I may not use cruise control much, and I can live without it, but it should come as standard on a product that costs a year of average day job salary. It's not the early 80s. Some sort of automation and recall with daw integration should come with a studio centerpiece like this. At this price I don't want to be finding work around like I do on the old cheapo desks I usually use. Trident's new flagship 88 at least offers add on automation at an extra charge if not input transformers as standard...

I dunno. Is it just me? Would anyone else buy one of these if they had the space and funds? It does offer great conversion and all you need is a dante card and a daw for tracking.... but that just doesn't justify the cost to me. I was so excited when they teased this bad boy and was thinking if selling a kidney until the specs were released. Why couldn't they have gone back to the ideas in the series 10 and 12 that competed with euphonix before digital mixing killed digitally controlled analog.

The 32classic also does not seem to have analog tape returns to the monitor path which means that I'm not sure if you could route the main path post fader to the "small fader" (in this case a knob like my soundtracs, a ghost or the new trident 68s, 78s and 88s, not a visuallyappealing 60mm fader) to do parallel tricks at mixdown.

On the other hand it's got the harrison eq... including those filters!

I saw that same video and could kinda relate. I find it harder and harder to share in other people's excitement and optimism when working on records...

How much of this is fatigue from doing the same thing so many decades, and how much is perhaps a general decline in sonic innovation in music over the past 20 years?

Its more like 10+years with a break for 5 or so and then the last maybe 8 part time. Maybe it's the people I wind up dealing with. Everyone says they're reinventing the wheel but attention to detail, a far more important day to day aspect of recording than creativity, is pretty much neglected since anything can be "fixed in the mix." Maybe those kinda attitudes are why there's a decline in creativity. I dunno. It's still fun to play with compressorsand EQs. Pink floyd didn't make dark side by neglecting the basics... they did the screwdriver work before busting out the tape loops.

The world of the 2020s seems to reward generalists who push ahead, rather than absolutely mastery. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. People of our generation, especially dudes, seem to place a premium on mastery... and I'm no different... but how beneficial that focus is, I'm not sure anymore.

Maybe some of it is that there was no outlet for our amateur efforts, by the time you were able to get a serious show or get your single on local radio in the 90s you had paid some dues and been forced to hone your skills through grinding repetition just to be afforded the opportunity to reach an audience wider than your highschool or college student body. Now there's youtube.

I'm stealing that approach. My keyboard chops are sorely lacking. I know I've played better.

Let me know how it goes.

At some point I have to put the bass down and get back into piano using this new approach. I know so many damn chords via the piano roll, but my fingers only really know the most basic root-position voicings.

As for 5 string basses, now I get why you're seeking one. With this method you're required to play in the key as written. If I'm practicing a song with a part I really like just for educational purposes and it requires me to retune I'll just as often transpose it, which is always a good mental exercise... it is nice to be able to return a synth with a knob or button, isn't it?

I can always pitch the whole thing up in a DAW, and I've done that... not as fun or satisfying as playing it in the original key, but it's doable.

That always sounds off, something about the harmonic content when pitch shifting. It's amazing how good they've gotten those algorithms but there are still artifacts that would set my ears off and distract me from playing.

Furthest I've come across so far is Chaka Kahn's Clouds... Anthony Jackson tuned his 4 string all the way down to C for that one.

I love Chaka... I really like those Rufus albums. I kinda backed into her first band from her solo work and got my mind blown. Musicianship used to be so high.

I'm not sure which would be more challenging for me: switching back and forth between 4 and 5 string, or switching between a 4 string tuned to E-A-D-G and one tuned to C-F-Bb-Eb.

5 string is weirder. Try one and you'll see what I mean. It's super cool, but using the 2nd string as your "right hand home" takes constant attention uf you're mainly playing 4 strings. Down tuning us way less weird, same number of strings with the same 4ths. Maybe its just me though. I have to be really mindful when I play 5 strings.

So you normally tune C F Bb Eb on a 4 string with really heavy strings to prevent them flopping around? I've gotten away with drop D or D standard because I usually use pretty heavy flats.. I think I tried C# for someone's tune in E that pretty much wanted to be C#m, but it was kinda funky like when you wake up too early and accidentally try to out on your wife's slippers.

Rat INTO wah... my 90s preference. Now that's a setup. A little fuzz, a little warble and done.

I'm not even sure 8f they still make the herdims? Do you know if they were an ge ordered online? Because they're not in stores and haven't been for years.

I usually do the 2 finger walk, but sometimes for really staccato stuff where I also want less harmonics I do a 3 finger pull and mute. I also learned classical guitar and will do thumb and 3 finger classical picking if its the only way I can get the part out the way I want. I've seen other people do these things but if you ask me who , I really can't remember. I think if you put on any late 79s steely dan record you're going to be gearing every right hand technique out there on bass. Those session guys gave a million tricks and needed all of them to do those records.

I saw a YT vid the other day with Steve Albini, and he said that, at age 55 (time of the recording), nothing in his work excites him or brings him ecstatic joy anymore, and he more or less accepts this as a natural part of being 55. Acceptance is good, but I'm not ready to stop being excited by new things... at least not yet.

I saw that same video and could kinda relate. I find it harder and harder to share in other people's excitement and optimism when working on records. Even when I really l like the music. I can come off as a negative Nelly but I've done this so many times that your ultra creative idea isn't new to me and just brings up memories of wasted time 15 years ago... I totally get what Steve's on about. It doesn't stop me from enjoying music I'm working on and it definitely hasn't lessened the dopamine hit I get when I turn a knob and hear something I like, eleven if the surprise and excitement are over. That's why i jam with friends most Fridays. For excitement. It's not always good... or even music in the most traditional sense, but at least the thrill is there.

Use it or lose it.

Woof

No one made you sleep with a metronome under your pillow? I think my jazz band instructor was more hardcore than I knew. He acted like it wss normal for teenagers to sleep to a 120bpm click.

That sounds amazing! We didn't have much of a music program at my tiny rural high school. There was only one other person in the whole school who even owned a guitar, and they were 2 or 3 grades behind me, and lived 15 country miles away. Not as big a deal today, with Youtube and the internet, but this was back when the internet was an exotic tool for "electronic mail" and checking weather forecasts that only a handful of people in the county had access to. I could have made some real progress if I had access to today's YT.

Amazing... thise guys were out and out cruel to children... but we all improved a lot, so yeah it was amazing in a way. Ubiquitous musical information, its just a normal way to learn now. And to think that we remember when getting an dumbass animated gif in an email was mind blowing. Although I've noticed that with all this info out there, this generation of kids seems to be constantly pushing ahead rather than mastering a particular skill perfectly. I remember learning new tricks and just practicing them incessantly l because I either had to figure it out on my own or someone more experienced passed it on to me... and those moments of discovery were few and far between. It's way harder to jump ahead on like a Joe Pass guitar method book than it us to flip through YouTube videos.

Dude, that's a really admirable work ethic and clever method. I wish more singers would perfect their phrasing the way you've come up with. Even when singing their own tunes, it drives me nuts when people sustain notes far past any musically relevant division. Once in awhile? That's a style thing. If you never rest or change notes on beat it really sucks the life out of the melody. A YouTube video doesn't know when you're ready to move on. There's stuff I was being told as a teenager that didn't fully sink in for years. Like "oh... I'm voice leading instinctively, that's what Dan was trying to tell me to do. So that's what that term means. I get it now. Damn."

It has made a world of difference for me. I can understand not wanting a first-year grade-school student to be A/Bing their performance to something a professional session player banged out, but once you're able to handle that level of self-scrutiny, modern DAWs and the ubiquity of leaked multitrack masters make it so effortless. I stick to the 70s stuff for bass, mostly, because that's the era of recording a passive 4-string dry into the console or through a mic'd B15... nothing fancy to distract me. I know that what I record at home through my interface should sound like a slightly brighter, more sterilized/clinical version of exactly what's on the record. If it doesn't gel with the rest of the tracks, I can blame my fingers, not my plugins.

I'm stealing that approach. My keyboard chops are sorely lacking. I know I've played better.

As for 5 string basses, now I get why you're seeking one. With this method you're required to play in the key as written. If I'm practicing a song with a part I really like just for educational purposes and it requires me to retune I'll just as often transpose it, which is always a good mental exercise... it is nice to be able to return a synth with a knob or button, isn't it?

Then live each day as if it's your rockin last.

Well, don't mind if I do. I'm Francis, I'm a 16-year old autistic (very low severity) male who lives in brazil. I found this website by accident and I've been engaged ever since. I have a very ecletic taste of music, but recently I've been more into alternative and indie rock, alongside it's subgenres. I don't have much gear, but what I lack in quantity makes up for... Yeah, nevermind. My equipment is very cheap, but my guitars are mostly good, for what's worth it.

You're at the age where you start acquiring the good stuff. Find a source of income. Save up. Look for deals. Learn to fix things. Be a trader. When you get tired of something, sell for a profit and reinvest in something more valuable. Don't invest in gear with poor resale. Never take a loss. If you can't break even at the time if purchase, think twice. Eventually you'll wonder how you got so much cool stuff.

We're close to the same age, you and I, but the way you phrased your original question made it sound like you were talking to your grandpa. We're not dead yet, Jim. Barely half-way there. :)

I got that, but yeah... if I implied you were old its because I feel old. To be clear, it's pretty admirable deciding to learn something new once you're officially 'middle aged.' I find my brain is much slower on the uptake now. I'm still fine with memorization but things like muscle memory or just understanding new concepts requires a little more effort even since my mid 30s... which has made me pretty complacent.

Anyway:

• I needed to borrow a bass to make a bass sample library.

• Why I needed to make my own sample set and not just use Scarbee is a long story.

So it doesn't matter. We've all have sample libraries we could easily have bought. At least all respectable music people have. Some people ask "why make what I could buy? Why buy samples I could pirate? Why not sound just like the last record I heard?"

• A buddy offered to loan me a good bass, but there were some logistical delays, and I decided to just acquire a bass at a price I could easily re-sell it at when I was done.

That's usually a good solution over borrowing. Almost anything you need to sample can be bought and sold on, often for a small profit. Weirder stuff you can rent if you're in California... and you are.

• I ended up getting way into playing bass in the process, as I had made that switch from guitar to bass sometime around college and had made at least 1 or 2 failed attempts to get more serious about bass since then.

So it's NOT your 1st rodeo!

• Something I've always struggled with, musically, is timing perception. My piano teacher was always on my case because I took liberties with note values, and my drum teacher was on me because I "played everything like it was a hip hop beat". In both cases, I couldn't perform things as straight and metrically-perfect as they wanted me to... I couldn't dial in to the difference between what I played and what they wanted. Playing bass now, as an adult with at least half his life left to go, is finally getting me dialed-in on that front.

No one made you sleep with a metronome under your pillow? I think my jazz band instructor was more hardcore than I knew. He acted like it wss normal for teenagers to sleep to a 120bpm click.

• Every morning, before the day starts, I sit down with my bass, and I re-record 16-bars or so of some great 70s multitrack recording with an enviable bass part. And then I listen back, evaluate, and repeat until my playing has a groove and cleanliness I can live with, at least for the morning -- and through doing this, I am finally starting to hear when and where I unintentionally get a bit ahead of the beat or when I'm unintentionally letting an 8th note go too long or too short. I'm in no danger of getting hired by Donald Fagen or Quincy Jones, but it's a start.

Dude, that's a really admirable work ethic and clever method. I wish more singers would perfect their phrasing the way you've come up with. Even when singing their own tunes, it drives me nuts when people sustain notes far past any musically relevant division. Once in awhile? That's a style thing. If you never rest or change notes on beat it really sucks the life out of the melody.

Cool idea to perfect your timing by rerecording lines you know. I should be doing what you're doing on piano. I'm a total slob anymore because no one's sitting over my shoulder groaning.

i mean if youre only dropping your low string 1/2 a step or a whole step, maybe just keep to a 4.

Keys are relative. No one is obligated to play a song in the key in which it was written l.

Your sarcastic evasion doesn't answer the question. I know why I can play the bass fluidly and it's 100% necessity. Most of the great bassists I know fell into it from keyboard or guitar. They've got no regrets but bass guitar chose them, not the other way. Taling up bass by choice seems weird to me.

Remember that episode of south park where Cartman needs a bassist for his christian rock band and Token doesn't even know he has a bass but can immediately play it?

That's a lot to unpack. What made you decide to take up the bass at this stage of your life?