I built the thing I wanted.

I started on cello as a kid, at the Escuela Libre de Música in San Juan and then the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. I could read music before I could do most other things. In high school I worked at a music store, which is where I learned that gear is a whole second language. Later I spent about ten years in the audio industry, representing companies like TC Electronic and Crest Audio, and after that I started building businesses instead. Music moved to the background for a long while.

A few years ago I picked up the bass. First new instrument since I was a child.

Learning something as an adult is a different experience entirely. You know what good sounds like, which is exactly the problem, because you can hear how far off you are and you have no patience for it. And I was doing it the way everyone does now: a lesson video in one window, a tab site in another, a PDF I bought somewhere, a song playing off my phone. Four things going at once, none of them aware of each other. Every night I rebuilt the same setup before I played a note.

The part that bothered me most was recording. Ten years in audio taught me that hearing yourself back is the fastest way to get better at anything. Every teacher says it. Almost nobody does it, and I understood why, because I wasn’t doing it either. It meant an interface, a DAW, routing, a session file, and twenty minutes of fiddling before the first note. On a Tuesday night after work, you just play instead. Then the hour is gone and there’s nothing left of it.

One window. The score, the actual record, my own tone, and a recorder that’s simply on. Nothing to set up, nothing to remember to press. When the song ends there’s a recording of it, sitting under the song, and I can hear exactly where I am.

Afinar is my fourth company. It’s the first one I built out of something I’d been doing since I was a kid, and the first one I’d have made whether or not it ever sold a copy. I use it every night.