John Gillespie Project, Day 2

It looks like John and I will be recording every Monday we can through out the summer.

On this second day of tracking, we recorded some acoustic guitar overdubs, lead vocals for five tracks, and bass guitar for three tracks. We also completed the drum mapping for one complete song.

Above is a miniature schematic of my pre-amp/compressor/eq settings for John's voice and John's bass. Often when recording, many questions arise: When do I compress something? How much do I use? What about those EQ knobs? Honestly, the best thing to do is to do nothing. If you don't understand what compression is, don't apply it. If you don't know what effect turning the 5KHz knob will have, don't turn it.

I have a conservative opinion of compression. Some producers are able to squash the mess out of a signal and make it somehow sound bigger. Because the nature of compression is to make things smaller, I generally don't use it. Faithfully, I use a limiter setting on any vocal, just because the recorded voice is much different from the natural, dynamic character of one's voice.

The difference between compression and limiting is in the ratio. If something is set between a ratio of 1.1:1 and 10:1, it's considered compression. If something is set between 10:1 and up, it's limiting. Of course, the ratio doesn't matter unless you know where to set the threshold. The threshold is the decibel level at which the compressor/limiter starts to apply its ratio. For example, if I were to set the threshold at -10 dB and a signal came through that was -8 dB, if my compression settings were 2:1, that signal would be reduced by 1 dB. Until you understand this, go ahead and leave your compressor out of the signal path.

Also, the attack and release time are important considerations. Some boxes don't have these, but some do. I generally set my attach and release times at "fast" and "fast" for most things. There are advantages to setting slower settings when it comes to the snare drum, kick drum, and bass guitar. This is where you can get a cool "pumping" sound that's in rhythm with the song. It takes practice to set this correctly.

EQ is an important consideration to apply before going to tape or hard disk with a given instrument. One reason for this is that EQ applied after the fact increases the wordlength of a digital signal. Since it's all one's and zero's with Pro Tools, you'll notice a degradation of your track the more plug-in's you apply. These machines are taking giant numbers that aren't necessarily divisible by each other. There are many numeric remainders that end up floating around in the signal. If you're using analog EQ's out of the computer, you don't have to deal with this. But still, once the signal is set, cutting out a frequency raises it's opposite on the other side of the EQ graph. The most important reason is that it's best to get this step right the first time. Again, if you don't know what ranges are represented by a given frequency, I'd leave the EQ out of the signal chain. If you have good instruments and decent microphones, there's probably not much reason to change anything.

For John's voice, I rolled off at around 100 hz on the preamp. I also set a basic limiting for his voice. This helped me get the signal as loud as possible without going over zero. A limiter set to 10:1 at just the right threshold almost insures that. For EQ, I had some issues with sibilence last summer with the Siren Child EP on his voice. With a spectrum analyzer, I was able to determine that the problem frequency for his voice is around 6.6 kHz. So, I rolled off a few dB here. On one sibilant song, a de-esser plug-in was able to catch some offending syllables. I also raised the 32kHz frequency with a hi shelf eq. This is something that the Avalon manual recommended. It helps give the vocal a little more air.

Bass is an instrument that most people agree should be compressed. I used a 4:1 ratio to clamp down on the notes. Bass compression helps to make the low end ring out as long as possible. I adjusted some EQ settings, too. I pulled some of the frequencies where acoustic guitars will live, I also boosted a little around the 1kHz range to boost the presence. Generally, cutting frequencies is preferential to boosting frequencies.

Beyond the technical aspects of this given session, I have to mention that these songs are really incredible. I've been a fan of John Gillespie for more than half of my life (I bought The Bluest Sky when I was 15). I can honestly say that some of his best work to date is represented in these songs. One song "Afternoons" is particularly striking. I woke up with it in my head this morning.

Also, John's singing was very well done. He normally took no more than three takes to get a master take we both liked. At the rate he is able to work, I feel that we'll be an extra day ahead of schedule from what I anticipated.

John Gillespie Project, Day 1

Last summer, I recorded an EP of new John Gillespie songs called The Siren Child. Yesterday, John and I began work on a follow-up of sorts to that very fun, very fulfilling studio project.

John approached me about the possibility of recording a larger, lengthier project than just a 6 song EP, which was what the Siren Child ended up being. He's making a conceptual, song-book style album that has a great theme to it. His theme is so original, I'd rather not elaborate on it too much. I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise.

This project began yesterday with a potential track listing of 16 songs. We recorded one of the songs last summer as a part of The Siren Child. Another of the songs, "Running to the River," was tracked a few Sunday's ago and posted to John's myspace page. That left 14 songs to hear, contemplate, and plan for.

The real trick with making a singer/songwriter based album is variety. Because the central elements of any singer/songwriter album are 1) the singer and 2) the singer's main instrument, those are the two key things to feature in every song on the album. Maybe on one or two of the tracks, you could have the singer perform an alternate instrument (like a mandolin or piano), but most of the time it's a good idea to capture what it is the artist does in a live context. From there, dressing up the each song in a way that's different from the others that surround it is the best path to making a balanced album.

Also, if you're going to feature a songwriter with some form of accompaniment, it's best to commit to what that accompaniment is going to be from an early stage. For example, if you're going to have a loop or drum kit accompany a song, it's best to incorporate that loop into the initial tracking sessions. It's much harder to integrate a new, different groove after the initial groove is established; it's next to impossible.

Yesterday, I asked John to play me the 14 songs. As he played them, I made notes and calculated an average tempo of the songs. After that, we both agreed on a groove, loop, or percussion part that would be appropriate to track the acoustic guitar to. We managed to get basic acoustic guitar tracks and song maps made for 12 of the 14 songs. We did this in about 10.5 hours over a 12 hour period. Studio days can be long ones some times.

The next step in this project is for John to sing the lead vocals on these songs. I figured that we would work in batches of 4 at a time. After the lead vocal take is constructed, it would be best to fully realize the drum patterns (as in add fills, make sure the parts are right for the song sections, etc...) and add bass guitar. I anticipate this stage taking about three days, but John is an incredibly competent studio singer. He usually can complete a master take after just a few passes of the song. It may take as little as two days to complete this stage.

This is an incredibly fun project. I can't wait to get back to work on it.

Congratulations, Justin!

I'd like to give credit where credit is due.

Justin Karpinos just released his newest album, Flyover.

Justin approached me last November about recording a few tracks for his record. I agreed. I produced two songs for this project: "If You Go" and "Fifteen Percent." I also touched up the mix of "A Window Out" and mastered the entire project.

JK is a singer/songwriter from Chattanooga, TN. His website is www.justinkarpinosmusic.com . Check out his site for ordering information and tour dates.

This was an extremely fun project for me to engineer and record. It's refreshing to produce an artist who's going for something unique. I also contributed bass guitar and piano to one of the tracks.

Thanks, Justin! Best of luck to you on this great EP.

Where There's a Door

"Where there's a door, there's a light."

In all this talk of aleph lists, journals, dictaphones, and Pro Tools, sometimes songs just appear out of thin air. If your there to catch it, it's one of the coolest things ever.

I have this purple effects pedal that has generally gone unused over the past four years. It's not hardwired into my pedal board. It's sounds are so bizarre that there is rarely a reason to use it. Occasionally, I'll program a patch that's musical and magical.

On the left channel of "Where There's a Door," you should hear a pulsating guitar thing. That's a "seek wah" patch that the purple pedal, when programmed, produced. Pretty cool, eh? The rhythm never changes, so I was locked into a tempo immediately. Because the rhythm was set, it made sense to use this pattern as the "click track" for the song. Using beat detective, I found the tempo and programmed the drum patterns appropriately. The effect was a more fluid song.

Over the past few years, I've been writing about ascension, or rising from despair; hope. This song is a portrait of hope. When the ship's going down, you've gotta keep your cool and keep your chin up. Otherwise, you sink. If you haven't figured it out yet, life isn't fun. It's hard. It's painful. It's tremendously disappointing. I think how we deal with that incontrovertible fact defines the kind of person we are.

The central image from this song comes from a common, everyday occurrence. Try this. After dark, turn off all the lights in your house. Now, find a walk-in closet, or one with light fixture. Turn on the light in your closet and close the door. Walk back a few feet and look at the door. It should have light sneaking out of the edges. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and see this. It scares the crap out of me.

Two Shadows

"Two shadows on the rise, forging lightning in the sky."

The week before last, when I was attempting to sketch out as many ideas as possible, I had a day when I pulled out my full electric rig. If you've ever seen it, it's the monstrous pedal board and that towering amp set up I used to regularly use from 2001 - 2003. It's really, really, really loud. I came to a series of sketches that were "riff based."

riff - A short rhythmic phrase repeated constantly {a shortened variant of refrain}.

So, I had a handful of songs that had these repeating, heavy guitar lines. I opted to pick the one that would be the most unlike anything else I had done. The one I picked was just two chords played over and over and over again in the same shuffle rhythm. I didn't have any songs with a shuffle feel. This seemed like the right piece to develop.

On the recorder, I mumbled some words. It sounded like I said "Two shadows on the rise, forging lightning in the sky." That seemed like a compelling portrait to develop. I mapped out a structure and began recording.

The lyrics were almost intuitive. I had to come up with quite a few for the verses. These all came from the same page in my journal as "Civil Twilight." To change it up, I made the setting a sunrise rather than a sunset. Conceptually, it's usually a good idea to at least consider having songs that can work as a matched pair. An opposite. You can see this applied all over the Dirty Wake album. "Shut up now" followed by "tell me everything;" "I want to believe in you" answered with "let me die." The sense of presence with "Superhero" coupled with the absence of "Wonderland." A principle you can apply to your writing is this: if an idea works one way, the opposite will most likely work in a similar way.

I love to play the guitar. I love to play fast and I love to play loud. This song seems to fit this need. There are about twelve different guitar solos on this song and I'd put more on there if I could. I love how the solo will play in the key and then play in the minor of the key. When you can do that and do it freely, you know you're on to something. Whether or not it's good...I don't know. You'll definitely have something, though. That's for sure.

The rhythm section on this track was the most challenging. I only had about 12 bars of unique stereo loops from which to construct the drum track. This is where live drums would have really been the better option. The stereo tracks were also played without much energy. I opted to compress the stereo track quite aggressively. This gave it some life. It also took a lot of the dynamics away, but that's the price you pay with compression.

Sometimes, when I'm walking my dog, the sun hits us at the right angle. We look like giants, titans. Our shadows are cast the length of an entire street. I wonder if that's where this image came from.

Also, sometimes when I don't get enough sleep and I get up and go to the gym, some of the things I dreampt of the night before still seem very present. For example, on Wednesday morning, I drempt that anti-freeze was pouring from my dashboard into my car as I was driving. As I drove to the gym, I thought briefly that I saw anti-freeze spew its way out of the AC vents. Didn't happen. I drempt it about five minutes before that, though. The mind can still be partially asleep at sunrise. That's where the verses come from.

Have a great weekend.

Mr. G's Advocacy

Here's a link to a project I produced this past weekend for my good friend John Gillespie. We're planning on recording a whole record of these songs this summer.

http://www.myspace.com/mrgsadvocacy

The song is called "Running to the River." We recorded it in about five hours at my studio. I'm really looking forward to working on the rest of these songs. If you're on myspace, please check out the song and add Mr. G as one of your friends.

Cheers!

Roller Coaster

"I gotta get out of here."

A song can function as metaphor. Sometimes it can be a metaphor within a metaphor.

met-a-phor - A figure of speech in which a term is transferred from the object it ordinarily designates to an object it may designate only by implicit comparison or analogy.

This of course is not to be confused with the simile where two unlike things are compared by using the words like or as. In our current vernacular, the simile might be the most misused parcel of diction. I used to get confused when people would start sentences with "I was like..." and then not complete the thought. Now I just chalk it up with the rest of the casualties of the English language. With "irony," the "simile" has also garnered the same fate. It's sad.

The song "Roller Coaster" is a metaphor. I found a skeleton of it on my dictaphone as I sat down to review my fragments last week. I'm not sure why I never developed it. It's not the best song in the world, but, at least, it deserved being finished...to be made into a complete thought.

When people hear these kinds of songs from me, they often ask if I'm having relationship troubles. No, I'm not. That's were the analogy comes in. The song uses the portrait of a bad relationship to convey a sense of entrapment. The metaphor can then affect the listener in two ways. For one, someone may relate the comparison to her own relationship and think "yeah, I feel that way sometimes." For two, someone might hear this and say, "yeah, I need to get off of these anti-depressants," or, "Wow, I'm really drinking too much" or, "I'm smoking too much weed." Then, the listener might (assuming he likes the song to begin with) feel like he has to change something. To walk into light we must ascend from darkness.

In listening to the song (I have the track on as I write this), this honestly sounds the most like the stuff I've done in the past. The date on my dictaphone was late 2002, so that would make sense that it sounds like something that could have been on the MG4 EP. Being so, I approached the production with sparse instrumentation. Acoustic guitar, drums, one electric guitar (a strat) and a simple bass line (played with the thumb). I added a B3 patch (that's a vintage organ sound) to the background to thicken up the exterior.

Where I embellished this song was in the vocal sound. I sang in a low register for the most part. Then, I doubled and tripled the chorus parts. It made for a lush experience.

When producing a song, it's a good idea to try to give the listener a different experience each time a new part of a song enters. The first verse features just some hand percussion with the acoustic guitar. The second verse has the bass enter with some additional percussion. The chorus has the whole band enter...this is a good way to make the chorus jump out. The third verse brings things down a bit, but only by having the electric guitar drop out and play some accent notes. The second chorus features a panned and intensely EQ'd vocal answer..."I gotta get outta here." Then there's a solo/bridge. Then there's a chorus where one of the passing chords is changed slightly. All in all, the idea with production is to make the three minute journey one that is entertaining. One way to do that is to vary the sections of your songs.

So, thank you to everyone who immediately downloaded these songs and gave some initial comments. I am trying to move in directions that are exciting and new to me.

I'm surprised that the more positive comments have been surrounding the Axis Suite.

Maybe starting a jazz combo isn't a bad idea after all. If you think these sketches are cool, man, I'd really like for you to see a live combo deliver a performance of these tunes. I played "Axis 2: Candelabra" last night at Speakeasy Jazz at the open mic night. As I went to sit down, I said to myself, "Man, did that really just happen? That was awesome!" And really, isn't that what playing music should be all about? I think so.

Civil Twilight

"Civil twilight radiates the void."

Most songs serve one of three functions. They can either be

1. a portrait
2. a metaphor, or
3. a statement

"Civil Twilight,"the first song from the Candelabra Sessions, is a portrait of the period of time between sunset and when the sun is six degrees below the horizon. It usually lasts about thirty minutes. In most cases, artificial light is not needed to carry out normal outdoor activites during this time.

During my Easter vaction (in which my wife and I visited Savannah and Tybee Island on the South Eastern corner of Georgia) I took a picture of this sign. It happened to be during civil twilight...or, in layman's terms, it was dusk.

Also, over the past year, I have been reading a tremendously beautiful and tragically disgusting book by Chuck Palahniuk called Haunted. Of course, there's a story in the book called "Civil Twilight." This tale addresses the need for people to believe in a monster in order for them to be afraid of it. In the story, an invisible monster kills people during dusk. But, because no one can see it, no one believes it's really there.

With songwriting, everything comes from somewhere. I never know what's going to set me off and inspire me to create. One thing that I like to do is to reflect on what I read, what I watch, and to what I listen. In the case of reading this story, I proceeded to write down some thoughts and feelings I immediately had at it's conclusion. I read this story a few times and wrote different things at the close of it. That saying about art not being created in a vacuum...well, that's pretty much 100% true. It's important that you create your own idea from the inspiration, though. Palahniuk's story inspired the thoughts that inspired this song. Make sense?

Lyrically, I attempted to create a portrait of things that typically go through my mind at any given sunset. Why are we here? Where do we go after this? Is there some reality being presented to me on a daily basis that I haven't deciphered as of yet? What does this mean? That's the gist of the song.

In terms of the music, I wanted to write a song that used some major 7th chords. A lot of jazz compositions have complex chords. I've been soaking in complex records for the past year and I figured it was only a matter of time before these things found there way in to my writing. To understand what a major 7th chord is, go find a piano. Play middle C with the major 3rd (E), the major 5th (G), and then the major 7th (B). They're all white keys with one white key dividing them. It's a fuller sounding chord than the standard major chord, which is composed of the 1-3-5 without the 7.

Major 7th chords and really distorted guitars don't really go well together. The more distorted a guitar is, the more the complexity of the chord is masked. At a guitar's most distorted, even the most complex chord will convey just a root note.

To make a major 7th chord work, you have to dial in your tone just right. If you don't, you'll have a bunch of mud on your hands.

The main riff for this song was tripled. There's a hard pan to the left of a somewhat distorted guitar. There's a hard pan to the right of a slightly more distorted (but different) guitar. Then, the individual riff was divided. I used a fuzz pedal on the single notes and then a dreamy shimmering effect on the major 7th chords. This gives us a full picture of the riff without it having to sound too limp.

I like to write big choruses sometimes. For this song, I opted to write a big bridge. You don't see those too often. They're almost counter intuitive, but if you accentuate them the right way they can work. Because I had four guitar tracks going already, I just played the big chords during the bridge. When all of the guitars are nearly independent until this one part, it makes for quite a drama; noise.

The guitar solo on this is a bit rediculous, I know. I couldn't resist. If someone else ever produces this track, this will probably get cut out. It was fun to put this solo together. Note how the EQ on the lead guitars is quite different from the rhythm guitars. This is where using EQ can come in handy. For the rhythm guitars throughout the song, I stuck to the Marshall's natural distorted tone (no fuzz boxes, no pedals). Then, once the need to differentiate the tones became necessary, I pulled out the fuzz boxes.

You're probably wondering who's playing drums on this track (and all of these tracks for that matter). The drum patterns come from discrete drums (www.discretedrums.com). The guy who thought of this was brilliant. In stead of just providing loops, the recordists for this project recorded each drum on individual tracks. In effect, you get pretty close to what you'd get in studio if you had a drummer come down and play. In practice, you save money. Each kit costs about $350 and is worth every penny. All of the patterns are fully licensed--that's why they cost so much. I should mention that the drummer was Chris McHugh and the percussion ist was Eric Darken.

The bass on this track is me, too. For my demos, I like to play a very basic bass line. That way, if for some reason a more sophisticated player comes in to play on the song at a later date, none of my prescribed motifs are locked into anything.

Mixing this track wasn't too much of a challenge. I did do some touch ups yesterday and today after I gave my ears a break from mixing five songs in a row. The only changes I made were muting some of the amp buzz and bringing the overhead mics down about 6 dB in the verses.

I also mastered the track for mp3. This just meant bringing the overall level up so that the average volume was around -10 dB. Also, I did some slight EQ. All in all, it's a moderately bright track, but not as bright as some songs.

So, I hope you've enjoyed reading about my writing process. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are a number of reasons why I've chosen to open my studio doors and let you all take a peak at what goes on in here.

Rock on, my friends.
You may download this song by clicking here.

Candelabra Sessions - A Personal Review

can-de-la-bra - n. A large decorative candlestick having several arms or branches.

After coming off of an intense week of songwriting, recording, and mixing, it's always a good idea to take a minute an reflect on one's work. Per the posts that appear before this one, you can see that last week I made an effort to write and demo five songs in five days. The idea behind the project was to use positive pressure to produce a (hopefully) good outcome. My thinking was that if at least one of these five songs was subjectively good by my standards, then I'd have done a good thing.

In spending some time with the five songs I wrote, I've concluded that four of the five songs are compositions that I enjoy. There's one that I dislike. All of them are different from each other...each weaves it's way out of some aspect of my already twisted psyche. I saw a picture of a candelabra last week and I thought that the image was very much a metaphor for what was going on in my studio. One project with several independent appendages. If I had seven songs, I could call it the hydra sessions, but I couldn't pull that off.

As a songwriter, it's always important to maintain a writing dialogue. By that I mean, you have to write songs if you are going to call yourself a songwriter. The purpose of this session was many fold.

1. I hadn't written a song in about nine months. With the work I did in getting my DVD ready as well as my Gossman Passion production under way, songwriting wasn't a viable reality for me in recent months.
2. I'll be playing a few shows this summer and I'd like to have some new material.
3. I'm beginning to get more and more work as a producer. I wanted to showcase the quality of work I am capable of in a matter of days. When you hear these songs, yes, they were written and recorded in just five days.
4. I would like to help the world write better songs. If I have to hear one more song that rhymes "girl" with "world," I think I'm going to snap. When I share these songs with you, I'm going to elucidate the process(es) from which they arose.
5. My Marshall had a lot of dust on it and I just wanted to play it for a week. My ears feel like they have cotton in them from the intense volume, but I don't play it all the time. When I do, it's a special time.

So, how do you write a song? There is no accepted set of rules with songwriting, but it is important to have a process that works. Some people write by appointment. Some people write when they feel like it. Some people don't know how they write songs, but when they do it's pretty friggin' good. Some people write bad songs on purpose to make money. Some people write great songs and make no money.

As for me, I have three things that I have at my side when I sit down to "write." This is what I call my toolkit.

1. A legal pad - I like to write on a yellow legal pad, with 8 1/2 by 11 paper. I don't think this is technically a "legal" pad, but I like the yellow ones. If you ever see me with a yellow pad of paper, I'm writing a song.
2. A dictaphone - I use a small digital dictaphone made my Sony. It's archaic, but it's not one of those ones that run on tape. I use this to store musical ideas, phrases, and motifs. Often, I'll have a song about 60% finished when laying it into the recorder.
3. My Aleph List - This is a list of images that I've written in a personal journal for use and/or manipulation in a song. When I'm in a writing phase, I like to spend a half hour or so a day writing down interesting images, thoughts, reflections, or ideas into my list. I learned of this technique in a poetry class at UNC. I got a B in the class.

Once I have a bunch of songs mapped out, I'll make an arbitrary decision about which ones to develop. Going into this week, I had about 12 songs in some sort of amorphous, gelatinous state. I chose what I thought were the best five to finish.

So, the five songs that I wrote were these:

1. Civil Twilight
2. Roller Coaster
3. Two Shadows
4. Where There's a Door
5. Jenny's in Love

The first four are the ones that I like. My approval, like anything else in the artistic world, is entirely subjective. The fifth song "Jenny's in Love" feels wrong to me on a number of different levels. It's going into a folder on my Glyph drive labeled "Song Graveyard."

There are two inherent problems with this song. First of all, it's stock. I doubt you'll hear this song, but if you ever did, you'd immediately notice that it sounds like about five other songs I've either written or been a part of reconstructing in a live setting. I'm not going that way. I'm going this way. Secondly, the lyrics are far too dark for my taste. They're too dark for the pop sensibility of the music. It's a little too predictable. So, it gets the ax.

Now, the other four songs all have stories behind them. I look forward to sharing them with you in the weeks to come. Please tune into the Studio Journal for posting times and more information about this project. Also, if you're an aspiring musician, my studio doors are open.

Rock on, my friends.

Five in Five: 5/5

I reached my writing goal. I'm really tired right now, but I finished writing and demoing five songs in five days.

It's time for dinner. I'll be sending these off to the copyright office on Monday. And, then, I'll also decide whether or not I should post any of them for download.

Thanks for tuning in.

Five in Five: 4/5

Yesterday was the last day before mixing. Being so, I had to do all of the last minute overdubs, background vocals, and edits. I finished with all of these things around 2 p.m. and I had until 4 p.m. to work. So, I began mixing.

I opted to begin mixing the densest of the five songs, "Jenny's in Love." I have mixed feelings about this song for a number of reasons. My biggest beef with it is that it doesn't break any new musical ground. Lyrically, it's steeped in irony...that's the only reason I finished it. If you're a fan of songs like "Superhero" from the Collapsis record or "Walk Away" from the Hourglass record, I think you'll like this song. It does, however, dwell on the dark side of things. All of these songs do.

What I noticed about my mix down is that I need to thin out some of the low and low mid EQ. For all you home-recordists out there, if your mixes sound muddy and unclear, try cutting out the low frequencies of non-bass instruments. This always helps.

Five in Five: 3/5

I met my goal for the day. I had to finish the structures and lyrics for two songs by the end of the day yesterday. I made it in good time.

I had to fight not censoring myself. I got to the point with one of the new songs where I thought, "Man, this kind of sucks." But, then, once I started getting into it, it felt pretty good. Lyrics are always the hardest part of a song. Anyone who tells you different is either a liar or Bernie Taupin.

But really, the whole point of this process is to pressure myself to write under a deadline. There might be a few duds in here, but everything seems to make sense. All the songs have a point and a theme to them. I have no idea where these songs will end up, but it seems important to continue to write and continue to create.

Many of the folks on the myspace site have been interested in getting some stuff that "rocks more" from me. I hope this session can fill that need, too. I only touched my acoustic guitar once during this whole process.