I've run into one of those odd situations you can get into in a recording project. It may be only of interest to the recording buff or the terminally curious; but here goes.
I had previously copied my old home-recorded 4 track tapes into my digital system. Before putting it on the shelf, I made a new version of "Against the Tide" by replacing most of the tracks, except the "bass". That track was actually an electric guitar, recorded with the tape machine running at double speed so it would play back an octave lower.
An that is the crux of the problem.
Suddenly, this tune spoke up and demaded a place on the album I am currently working on. I reloaded the digital data and found most of the tracks had serious sound-quality issues...I believe this was due to my inexperience with new equipment at the time, plus some other reasons.
I had written a disc of this new mix, with all new tracks...EXCEPT the original bass which I kept, but had laboriously chopped off the "string noise" that occured on nearly every note of the tune (when the string was released).
Anyway, after reloading I decided to try to save the drums, lead guitar and vocal. The bass had several sound quality problems, so during my long session of moving tracks around to a more conventional layout that I have since developed, I erased the bass, intending to replace it.
And this is when reality struck. After experimenting with a number of bass sounds, I realized I could get a cleaner track, but could not replace the unique character of my taped "bass". One of those moments! I finally decided that "character" was more important artistically than a "clean track", so I am in a position where I must erase the tune, & reload the data, and rearrange all the tracks in order to get that bass track back again! Oh the fun I have!
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