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Old 12-09-2008, 09:04 PM   #63
yep
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Join Date: Aug 2006
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So anyway, if the above puzzle gives you a headache, that should actually just hammer home the point that trying to think through this stuff is actually a lot harder than just listening. Moreover, there's no way to expect yourself to keep track of things like this and mentally cross-reference them.

All you need is ears. If you can hear the problem, you can hear the fix. The theory is not only unnecessary, it's not really even that helpful. I have never, ever, thought through an eq problem that way, and I doubt anyone else has either (the example was something that I figured out after the fact). And even if I did have a flash of insight and figured out what the cause was, I'd count myself clever and then STILL suss it out by ear.

But the real point of the above exercise was to illustrate the problem with presets. Whether you understand all the ins and outs of the breakdown or not, the real point is that the above fix would not have worked on a bass that didn't depress the D string, nor for any song that was not in the same key. Theory-minded bass players will recognize instantly that a boost of the second octave G# would be a serious problem for songs in the key of E, especially if the D string were NOT quieter than the others.

You can't just dial in a good bass sound and then use that for everything and expect to get the same effect. I can't go so far as to say that presets and recipes are useless, but I think there is more danger for the novice in over-reliance on them than there is in simply not using them at all. In some respects, the less you need them, the more useful they can be. The great danger is in trusting presets more than your ears, and sadly, I think that is often the norm among beginning home recordists these days.

More to come.
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