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[Ham_authority95]

Any general tips for song/lyric writing? Because I wanted to make a concept project where the verses of the songs would all be spoken words, and the choruses would be sung, but I'm creatively fucked.

 

[BonsaiK]

Any general tips for song/lyric writing? Because I wanted to make a concept project where the verses of the songs would all be spoken words, and the choruses would be sung, but I'm creatively fucked.

A song is basically an idea, before it's anything else. Something I tell my students who are songwriting: imagine you're in English class and your teacher comes up to you and says "write a story". It's hard to think of something off-the-cuff. It's like when someone says "tell me a joke" - you might know a hundred jokes but it's easy to draw a mental blank when someone puts you on the spot. However, if that English teacher came up to you and said "write a story, it has to be about 2000 words, there needs to be a bank robbery, two guys, a girl, a gun and a car, and only one of them is allowed to live till the end" then suddenly your job becomes easier, because you have a framework laid down. If you've got a reasonably active mind, your brain has probably already thought about who is going to live, who will die, and whether they successfully rob the bank or not by the time you've read this far. If you have no idea with where to start with a song, just try and give yourself some "rules" to go by (they can be completely arbitrary), and then you'll find that the creativity starts flowing more, because you've now got some kind of direction laid down to go in - you're not writing in a void. Usually once you get started it's pretty easy to then continue.

 

[Sn1P3r M98]

How can some cursing get past censors (well, whatever the people who mark songs as clean or explicit are called), and not be listed as "explicit" on a site like iTunes?

I'll take Disturbed as an example here. The song "The Game" drops an F-Bomb at the end, but isn't listed as explicit on iTunes. Meanwhile, "Down With the Sickness" does the same and is marked as explicit on iTunes.

In both songs, it's quite easy to hear the cursing, so it's not like someone would miss it.

Not that it makes a big difference to me, I'll buy the music anyways, just a curiosity I had.

 

[Ham_authority95]

Any general tips for song/lyric writing? Because I wanted to make a concept project where the verses of the songs would all be spoken words, and the choruses would be sung, but I'm creatively fucked.

A song is basically an idea, before it's anything else. Something I tell my students who are songwriting: imagine you're in English class and your teacher comes up to you and says "write a story". It's hard to think of something off-the-cuff. It's like when someone says "tell me a joke" - you might know a hundred jokes but it's easy to draw a mental blank when someone puts you on the spot. However, if that English teacher came up to you and said "write a story, it has to be about 2000 words, there needs to be a bank robbery, two guys, a girl, a gun and a car, and only one of them is allowed to live till the end" then suddenly your job becomes easier, because you have a framework laid down. If you've got a reasonably active mind, your brain has probably already thought about who is going to live, who will die, and whether they successfully rob the bank or not by the time you've read this far. If you have no idea with where to start with a song, just try and give yourself some "rules" to go by (they can be completely arbitrary), and then you'll find that the creativity starts flowing more, because you've now got some kind of direction laid down to go in - you're not writing in a void. Usually once you get started it's pretty easy to then continue.

Hey guess what? I just got a verse written, and I can tell that the song will be an analogy for a communist revolution. Thanks for the advice.

 

[BonsaiK]

How can some cursing get past censors (well, whatever the people who mark songs as clean or explicit are called), and not be listed as "explicit" on a site like iTunes?

I'll take Disturbed as an example here. The song "The Game" drops an F-Bomb at the end, but isn't listed as explicit on iTunes. Meanwhile, "Down With the Sickness" does the same and is marked as explicit on iTunes.

In both songs, it's quite easy to hear the cursing, so it's not like someone would miss it.

Not that it makes a big difference to me, I'll buy the music anyways, just a curiosity I had.

iTunes have a track record for being laughably inconsistent when it comes to things like that, ridiculously overcensoring in some cases while simultaneously letting other things slip through the net without a fuss. I really think that they just don't pay that much attention to it. When you consider how much content is on that site, listening to and rating it all must be a real *****, and I'm sure they don't even bother for the majority of stuff. When they see (clean) or (explicit) next to a band's song, I'm betting that they probably just take the artist's word for it until somebody complains. It's probably a similar system to how censorship works on YouTube.

 

[Wintermoot]

how much do artist REALY get (IE how much of a percentage per CD/digital album sold)?

 

[BonsaiK]

how much do artist REALY get (IE how much of a percentage per CD/digital album sold)?

I actually answered this about 7 or 8 pages ago, but I'll save you the trouble of hunting and do a cut-and-paste.

That's a really good question. It varies wildly from case to case.

Firstly, does the artist owe the record label money? When big artists get signed they often get a big chunk of money to record their album. However that money is not a gift, it's a loan, which then needs to be paid back through album sales. The band typically sees no money at all until the debt is repaid. Let's take the example of a pop band who had a couple of huge and I mean huge singles that they released off their own bat, a record label picks them up and likes them so much that they give then $100,000 to record their album. The band goes "fuck yeah $100,000 thanks a bunch", records their album, and spends the change on cars, clothes, hookers, drugs, whatever. Their album does okay, they do end up selling a few thousand copies of their album, enough to repay the loan, but they still never see any money. Why not? Because every time the label does things to promote that artist, that money gets added to the existing debt. More sales fuel more promotion and it just goes around and around, the band never gets in the black. A few years later, the band goes cold in the marketplace as music fashion changes, their albums stop selling, and they're in debt up to their eyeballs, they eventually go "fuck this" and pack it in. Ever wonder what happens to those bands that were huge for a few years and then suddenly dropped off the radar, now you know...

So, let's assume that the band were clever, and were offered $100,000 and said "actually, no - we'll record our album for $5000, and by the way we'll have our lawyer look over the contract and make sure that you can't do any promotion and charge our debt without our collective authorisation" so the label gives them the $5000, they record their album, it does reasonably well, the label doesn't go crazy with stupid advertising, and they're in the black in a few months. So how much money are they getting?

Well, did they write their own songs? If not - uh oh. Cover songs - the original songwriters are the ones who collect the royalties. A band I'm friends with (who shall remain nameless) had a massive national hit a few years ago - with a cover song. I took the singer to lunch one day and said "so how much money have you seen?" - the answer - "we get a wage from the label, which is about enough money for pizza and cigarettes, but we don't see any CD sales money at all, we owe them too much money. The only other money we see is from merch sales". If you're selling a single that's a cover song and it becomes a big hit, you'd better at least hope that you wrote track 2.

If the band did write their own material, well it varies depending on what's in the contract. The lowest royalty rate you'll see on a major label is about 5%, and the highest might be 25%. Obviously a band who is hot in the marketplace or has a significant track record of sales weilds more negotiating power and can demand better treatment here. Independent labels sometimes offer better deals than this, sometimes not. Really small labels will often go 50/50 with artists once expenses are covered as a matter of principle, but then getting a big monster hit on one of these small labels is unlikely because they might not be able to give you the promotional push a larger label with more money can. Of course if you release completely independently, then you get all the money, but then you're also paying your own production, promotional and logistic costs, the stuff a label would normally take care of for you.

This is a wild oversimplification, I haven't talked about "reserves", "overruns" or what happens when you sell music on the internet (where royalties are less due to legal technicalities) but that'll give you some general idea. The short answer to your question is "probably not much - but as a general rule, the bigger the label, the more potential sales you can make, but the less money you see per unit".

 

[MisterGobbles]

A lot of bands in some scenes, particularly metal, seem to switch members a lot (vocalists in particular). Is there something about these scenes that makes it hard for the members to get along, or do they just get tired and move on to other things more often?

 

[BonsaiK]

A lot of bands in some scenes, particularly metal, seem to switch members a lot (vocalists in particular). Is there something about these scenes that makes it hard for the members to get along, or do they just get tired and move on to other things more often?

The main reasons why people leave bands:

* "Creative/artistic differences" - members have a disagreement about current/future musical direction, a vote is carried and whoever is in the minority/less important/couldn't be bothered arguing the point leaves the group to pursue their own thing. Metal bands are often reconfiguring for this reason and it's probably because metal is such a fragmented beast these days. Maybe the odds are better that some band member will wake up on the wrong side of bed and go "hmmm, I'm kinda sick of blackened melodic deathcore, I'd rather be playing symphonic prog thrash" or whatever, just because of the huge proliferation of subgenres means the odds of this happening are more likely than with some other genre like blues, rock or country where there aren't quite so many areas of sub-genre specialisation that one might want to explore.

* "Personal differences" - basically someone isn't getting along with someone else. This affects all genres equally. When starting a band priority #1 should be finding people who you get along with. Skill deficits can often be worked on, but an asshole is usually always going to be an asshole. Drugs and alcohol certainly have an effect on this but that's something that also applies across the board in all music styles with the exception of classical musicians who are utterly loaded with pharmaceuticals in a manner with puts other genres to shame.

* Business reasons. A common situation is that someone's getting paid royalty rates because they write all the bands songs, and the other members aren't getting anything, or very little in comparison, so a dispute happens because even though the other members aren't songwriters in the traditional sense, they may feel as though their input into the song makes it sound the way it does and therefore they're songwriters in a sense because they write their own parts. Or maybe one member is making all the decisions about what type of deals to agree to, what money goes into promotion, merchandise or whatever. This affects all bands of all types.

* Differing committment levels. Maybe a band is starting to really take off and are offered a big tour of Europe but one band member doesn't want to go because he has a mortgage to pay and thus doesn't want to lose his day job and face an uncertain financial future, after all the tour may or may not be a success and the band may or may not be in the black by the end of it. Or maybe someone has children and doesn't want to take them on the road, but nor does he want to leave them for 6 months while he goes galavanting around the countryside while the wife stays at home and changes all the nappies. Or maybe he does, but she doesn't. This is also a pretty across-the-board concern for all musicians in all genres.

Another thing to consider is that in metal the vocalists are more interchangeable than other styles, because one guy going "uuuuuggrgggghhhh" kinda sounds much the same as another, and most metal fans usually aren't listening for the vocals as a primary concern anyway. It's easier for a metal band to survive a change in vocalist than most other styles, unless the band is losing a vocalist who is very distinctive.

Hopefully that goes some way toward answering your question, but I'm not sure if a definitive answer to it is really possible.

 

[Shivarage]

How important is absolute pitch to a musician? I would like to learn it but it seems I'm pretty useless, any advice on developing it or can you only be born with it?

It's really not important, to be honest. If you have relative pitch, know the sounds of all the different musical intervals, and you know your vocal range, then you don't even need perfect pitch for anything, ever. Sing the lowest note that you can sing comfortably without straining, then find out what note that is using an instrument. Now, as soon as you hear any other note, you can compare it to the note you just sung and provided you know relative pitch and how your different intervals sound you can figure out what that note is.

Most people who have perfect pitch are born with it. However some people who don't have it are able to develop it just because they play their instrument a lot, and those people only have perfect pitch on that instrument. For instance a guitarist who plays a lot of metal will recognise the sound of drop-D tuning immediately, but make them listen to a violin concerto and they won't know the pitches there. Some vocalists also develop perfect pitch simply because they know the muscle feeling when certain notes are hit, that's a bit like the example in the first paragraph but that only works for vocals and it only works when you are singing, not when you're listening to a recording (unless you're singing along).

I'm aware that there are courses that teach perfect pitch, and they do it by relating each of the notes to a colour, and apparently that helps somehow. I've never done those courses but I'd be surprised if they had a 100% success rate, I don't see how using colour for pitch would be any different to the current musical system of using a letter for pitch.

Whats your opinion on nirvana and kurt cobains singing?

Imo I dont think they would have got anywhere if not for dave grohls amazing drumming...

 

[aLivingPheonix]

When starting a band, how easy/hard is it to get signed with a label, and what are some good ways to get recognised?

Sorry if it's been answered before, I only skimmed 2 or 3 pages.

 

[BonsaiK]

Whats your opinion on nirvana and kurt cobains singing?

Imo I dont think they would have got anywhere if not for dave grohls amazing drumming...

I saw Nirvana live just after Nevermind came out. I thought they were okay but not exceptional, certainly nowhere near as good live as The Beastie Boys during the same time period (by far the best live act I've ever seen, they are the bar I hold everything else up to). I was annoyed that Nirvana only played for about 50 minutes and they did in fact waste a lot of time up there with pointless feedback and so forth. To be fair, Kurt had a cold so maybe he was resting his throat, and on the plus side it was only $19 so it's hard to whine about it with any real passion and not feel like a spoiled brat given how much concerts cost these days.

Anyone who focuses on Dave Grohl as the saviour of Nirvana or whatever is missing the point of why the whole Seattle grunge scene existed - it was a direct reaction the overblown technicality of 80s cock rock. I think that if all of Nirvana were as good as Dave Grohl, the group would have probably gotten bogged down in technical bullshit music and gotten nowhere. That's why Queensryche (who were also from Seattle) didn't get swept up in it and their fortunes plummeted significantly while grunge was popular. The whole point of Nirvana and bands like that becoming successful when they did is that it wasn't technical music and (apart from Dave) they weren't super-proficient players, but that this didn't matter because the songs were good and the presentation was no-bullshit, and that was something that was sorely in demand at that particular time in music history.

To illustrate what grunge did for music overall, here's a little anecdote. When I was growing up, I liked heavy music of all types. However, I felt increasingly frustrated with a lot of metal because it was made by people who looked like this:


...and that made me feel somewhat distant from the music. It's different nowadays, but back then, if you wanted to listen to new heavy metal that was also melodic, you were stuck listening to a bunch of poodle boys and having people question your sexuality about it. I grew up in a shitty suburb where people were being robbed at school for lunch money and everyone was broke, poor and ugly. There's no way I could relate to this stuff, I didn't mind the sound of the actual riffs but the whole attitude that went with it seemed abhorrent and was enough to turn me off the music completely and listen to Slayer instead (and even they were poodle boys in the beginning). I didn't have the historical context and knowledge at the time to understand that bands like Motley Crue underneath all the ostentatious garb actually were street scum just like me who were justifiably proud of their survival in a cut-throat business and flaunting it to the world. All I saw was make-up, poodle hair, lots of posing and I thought "the music's alright, but... ewww".

Then grunge happened. I was aware of it happening long before Nirvana exploded, but before Nirvana exploded the media hadn't invented the label "grunge" yet, so these bands were lumped under hard rock, and MTV would air the poodle bands and the grunge bands together in the same bracket, themselves not realising much of difference. Soundgarden had three albums out before most of the other grunge bands did anything at all, and according to the media they were a Led Zeppelin clone band and were lumped in the same category as Kingdom Come, Whitesnake (with David Coverdale) and so forth. Alice In Chains had one EP out and were played right alongside Skid Row and Warrant with absolutely no irony at all. Babes In Toyland already had something out. There was also Mother Love Bone, Green River etc... so it was all building gradually. I was also aware of other bands who were fucking with the hard rock forumla a bit such as Helmet and The Black Crowes. But these bands still sounded hard-rock-ish and kind of looked like hard-rockers (except Helmet who were kind of the exception that proved the rule).

Then suddenly something happened which really made everyone, including me, stand up and take notice.

Soundgarden's 4th album "BadMotorFinger", Nirvana's 2nd album "Nevermind", and Pearl Jam's debut "Ten" all came out in the same month. A few weeks later Alice In Chains released "Dirt". In other words, all four of grunge's biggest artists released their definitive albums all at the same time. MTV picked it up and so did radio, suddenly the airwaves were filled with the respective first singles off each of these albums, which were:


That's pretty much grunge's top 4 most-loved songs right there. Now imagine them all on the pop chart - at once. As a 17 year old with long dirty hair, crappy op-shop clothes, and no social skills, being picked on by parents, teachers, students, everyone, I looked at my TV and thought "fucking hell... these guys aren't pretty boys, they look like complete losers, hell, half of them look just like me!" They even had shitty semi-distorted guitar sounds too, I couldn't afford big amps and the cool crunchy pedals, their guitar sound sounded just like my practice amp. The lyrics were... well, it didn't really matter what they were, what was more important is what they were not, they weren't "she's my cherry pie" and all that kind of stuff, my ugly virgin ass couldn't relate to that at all. What's more, they could obviously play, but it didn't seem like really really technical music that would take ages to learn, I could play most of the grunge riffs straight off the bat. Suddenly heavy rock looked like it could be something that someone like me could actually have more than a snowball's chance in hell of pulling off. What an inspiring breath of fresh air, what a feeling that was. Now multiply that feeling by the amount of dirty, spotty, hard-rock-listening teenage losers there were in the western world at that moment, and you'll start to have some sort of appreciation of why grunge was so popular at the time.

Pop-raised kids loved grunge too, because the songs in grunge were important - there was melody, good songs in a short pop-friendly format and not an abundance of guitar wank or pointless prog excursions. Metalheads liked it too because at the end of the day even though it was poppy it was still distorted and heavy, and that's all it takes to please a metalhead half the time. It still had balls. Even the older generation at the time didn't mind it because they remembered the punk explosion of 1976-77 and they could see that history was repeating itself. The success of grunge seems inevitable in retrospect.

Could Kurt sing? Not very well, but I didn't care, he could sing well enough to do what he needed to do in that band. His rough-and-ready midranged gravel-mouth vocals were pretty goddamn crappy to be honest, but it was far preferable to Poison and Motley Crue's girly high-pitched squealing which was the other major choice at the time for new melodic hard rock music. His creaky vocals kind of added some welcome extra grit to the abrasiveness of the whole package to be honest, which offset the prettiness of the melodies in the songs.

That's probably way more of a comprehensive answer than what you wanted, but hey at least this post is now here so I can refer back to it if anyone ever asks me about grunge in the future.

 

[BonsaiK]

When starting a band, how easy/hard is it to get signed with a label, and what are some good ways to get recognised?

Sorry if it's been answered before, I only skimmed 2 or 3 pages.

How easy/hard it is to get signed? Well that basically comes down the three things: what sort of music you're doing, where you live, and if you suck or not. Obviously if your music is boring no-one will care. Being a bad player is tolerable in some circumstances but being a boring artist is the kiss of death. If you're in a really really small town you may have to relocate. Certain styles of music are more marketable than others and these things go in cycles. If you're playing some style which has only just recently gone out of fashion musically, like ska/punk, or RHCP-style funk-rock, don't expect success.

There are other things that could mess you up, but those are the three big ones that every band must sort out.

Ways of getting noticed, I did cover this before, scroll back and have a read, it's in there somewhere. If you really can't find it I'll try to find it later for you.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

That's probably way more of a comprehensive answer than what you wanted

Bah... you didn't mention Mudhoney once (of course they were on sabbatical when grunge was at it's media peak)

I think one of the funniest things about Grunge was the number of Aussie rock/power-pop bands who were informed they were grunge... or in the words of former Exploding White Mice frontman Paul Gilchrist, "I'm a fucking what now?"... well, that and bogans bitching that the grunge fad had pushed up the cost of flannies.

 

[BonsaiK]

That's probably way more of a comprehensive answer than what you wanted

Bah... you didn't mention Mudhoney once (of course they were on sabbatical when grunge was at it's media peak)

I think one of the funniest things about Grunge was the number of Aussie rock/power-pop bands who were informed they were grunge... or in the words of former Exploding White Mice frontman Paul Gilchrist, "I'm a fucking what now?"... well, that and bogans bitching that the grunge fad had pushed up the cost of flannies.

Yeah obviously Mudhoney were part of it too, there were quite a few bands I didn't mention that I could have, if I were name-checking my favourites or whatever. But as you point out it's all about timing.

I could always get flannies in op-shops, even when grunge was big. I never found out if the "designer flannie" trend ever really hit here, I guess I didn't shop in those kind of stores at the time. I could see Gilchrist saying something like that. I had a friend who insists that grunge was actually invented in Adelaide in 1981.

 

[MisterGobbles]

Just curious, how hard is it for bands to get a spot on Warped Tour? It is a pretty big tour, I would think that you would need some level of success before you played on it.

 

[aLivingPheonix]

When starting a band, how easy/hard is it to get signed with a label, and what are some good ways to get recognised?

Sorry if it's been answered before, I only skimmed 2 or 3 pages.

How easy/hard it is to get signed? Well that basically comes down the three things: what sort of music you're doing, where you live, and if you suck or not. Obviously if your music is boring no-one will care. Being a bad player is tolerable in some circumstances but being a boring artist is the kiss of death. If you're in a really really small town you may have to relocate. Certain styles of music are more marketable than others and these things go in cycles. If you're playing some style which has only just recently gone out of fashion musically, like ska/punk, or RHCP-style funk-rock, don't expect success.

There are other things that could mess you up, but those are the three big ones that every band must sort out.

Ways of getting noticed, I did cover this before, scroll back and have a read, it's in there somewhere. If you really can't find it I'll try to find it later for you.

Thanks for the answer.

Do you know which page you covered getting noticed on? I've just searched through the previous 12 pages, and couldn't find it.

[sub]I was probably looking right at it, and just didn't notice...[/sub]

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Yeah obviously Mudhoney were part of it too, there were quite a few bands I didn't mention that I could have, if I were name-checking my favourites or whatever. But as you point out it's all about timing.

Yeah, they certainly picked a shitty time to go on hiatus so a few of the guys could go back to studying, at least where commercial success is concerned. Still, they had a lot of influence and were very much a 'band's band' for grunge.

I could always get flannies in op-shops, even when grunge was big. I never found out if the "designer flannie" trend ever really hit here, I guess I didn't shop in those kind of stores at the time.

It did and it didn't... It hit but, yeah, the trendy fucks still weren't willing to go to povvo areas to get them and trawled 'clothing recyclers' rather than op-shops. Bogans I encountered still bitched about it all, though.

I had a friend who insists that grunge was actually invented in Adelaide in 1981.

Interesting theory. I mean, I can sorta see the basis because a lot of early Aussie punk bands pretty much sounded like grunge did in it's pre-accoustic ballad phase... and there were certainly more than a few Aussie bands that ended up name checked by grunge outfits... but if we're going on sound similarities and name checking then grunge was actually invented in the late 60s in Detroit by the now named 'proto-punk' bands.

 

[BonsaiK]

Just curious, how hard is it for bands to get a spot on Warped Tour? It is a pretty big tour, I would think that you would need some level of success before you played on it.

Well, yeah, or you'd have to be really hot in the marketplace or whatever. I'm not involved in that tour in any way so I can't really comment, and I wouldn't comment on Warped anyway just out of professional ethics, but I can comment in very general terms about festivals. Usually there's a group of people who decide, like a committee, and it's just a matter of bending the ear of someone in it. If your band doesn't have a release out (or one schedlued to come out by the time the tour starts) and you don't have any merch, you're probably not going to get a spot on something like that unless there is some unholy huge buzz around your band.

Festivals usually have "local" stages for the lesser known acts. Often those stages are booked by a different person and in a travelling festival a local person will usually take the responsibility of filling that stage with local artists, so then you need to find out who that person is, and knowing what their favourite vice is will help.

That's a fairly vague answer, I guess I work more with labels than festivals. I have some interaction with that side of things but not a lot. I know someone else who is a member of The Escapist does festival bookings as their day job, they'd be able to give you much better information than me if they were inclined to do so. I can't remember who that person is though.

 

[BonsaiK]

Do you know which page you covered getting noticed on? I've just searched through the previous 12 pages, and couldn't find it.

[sub]I was probably looking right at it, and just didn't notice...[/sub]

Okay, I found it, it was on page 4. It relates to the question of being signed by a label, which isn't quite the same thing as "getting noticed" but I guess functionally they're similar as one ideally leads to the other. Anyway, here is the reply and I think it mostly answers your question.

Getting signed: okay, the first thing you need to do is be musically superior. I don't mean technically, I mean in terms of songwriting. Some people just have the gift for it, some have to study it academically in order to "get it", some people have to get someone else to write songs for them (not an ideal option because then you don't get royalties but oh well). I don't care, do whatever it takes.

If you're a band rather than a solo artist, make sure your band members are at least a little bit organised. I don't care how many drugs they do as long as they can show up to their own gigs and studio sessions. Also, make sure that they want this. You don't want to be just about to sign on the dotted line and then someone gets someone pregnant and that screws up the whole ball game.

Okay, so assuming that you/your band is amazing and you're all on the same page, here's the main ways that bands get signed:

* Word of mouth from astoundingly good live performances reaches an A&R person who then goes and sees the artist at a show.

* The artist sends in a demo to a label, who like it.

* The artist knows someone personally who works at a label, and sends in a demo to that person, who makes sure it gets heard, and they like it.

* The artist has no material but is liked by the label because they are a known talent (usually through word of mouth, sometimes through a business referrral), and are groomed by the label.

* The artist figures that the industry sucks and they aren't going to get signed (or don't want to be) so they just release their own stuff anyway and go on self-funded tours, which ends up boosting their profile to the extent that the industry then starts paying attention to them.

As soon as anyone from any label starts offering you something and showing you bits of paper, get a music industry laywer to look the deal over. Very important, do not skip this step.

Let me know if you have further questions and I'll do my best.