good news is i got the bass in the ambient section to sound perfect.
frustrating part is that i need to play it like a robot to do it. guitarists - even very good guitarists that are much better than i am - are actually sort of notorious for not being able to do this well. we don't spend hours of our childhood doing this like violin or cello players do because the instrument cycles around bits of syncopation. we even tend to put down guitarists that play perfectly in time by telling them they lack feel and have no soul. but this needs to be perfectly, mechanically precise.
i've done this before. it's something i'm capable of. you've just gotta give me 50 takes to do it...
specifically, it's because we don't count in our heads like orchestra players do, we just feel the timings. it's really the wrong way to play from a classical perspective, but it's a blues instrument, and if you're sitting around counting you're going to sound really dull. i mean, there's counter-examples. i bet fripp counts. but that's kind of my point - fripp sounds like a robot most of the time.
but i have a math degree, so i'm certified to count to 8.
i'll get this....