Ryan Avery

Though I never claim to be a master when it comes to editing audio, I do know enough to be able to solve most day-to-day problems.

Recently, I was asked to create a shorter mix of a song for a dance troupe performance. They were using Down Home Girl by Old Crow Medicine Show, and had a lot of choreography set to the lyrics, but wanted a few alterations made:

• Remove the instrumental break
• Shorten the intro slightly
• Shorten the outro, but keep the ending riff

All of these were simple requests, and after hearing the song I figured this would be a fairly easy job. Here’s how I went about it.

Pre-work listening

I listened to the track a couple of times, noting sonic characteristics that would be important when making the edits.

• How much does the tempo change over the length of the song?
• How does the instrumentation change between verses and choruses
• Where are the obvious cut-points? Are there any gotchas?

Basically, I’m looking for anything that could ruin the edits that I was planning. In this case, the harmonica was in the foreground near the edit points, so I knew I would have to listen carefully to make sure I didn’t cut off any notes in mid-blow.

Project Setup

Though I could have easily done these edits in a WAV-file editor, I decided to work in Pro Tools, since I’m very familiar with editing in PT, and I already had it open while working on another project.

I created a new PT project with the following settings:

• Bit depth: 24-bit
• Sample rate: 44.1kHz

After loading the new project, I used the Import Audio dialog to import the MP3 I was given by the dance troupe.

I listened to the whole track, making sure to set a Marker at every major song section. It is important to put the markers exactly on the downbeats, which will save me lots of time in the future when making the actual edits.

The first edit – remove the instrumental break

The first edit I did was to remove the instrumental break. Rather than have the instrumental break, the troupe wanted to go directly into the next verse after the chorus, and also wanted to remove 2 bars of the standard pre-verse break after the chorus to go better with the choreography they were planning.

I usually find edits work best when they occur on beats. Be extra careful if either segment you’re editing together contains a legato foreground instrument – it will make the edit very noticeable if a sound suddenly appears or disappears.

Additionally, I often like to edit on a secondary beat, especially when dealing with acoustic music. The reason is because you can often find very good edit points on the pickups to the down beat. Due to the phrasing of most music, you’ll find sparser instrumentation at the end of a phrase. Of course, it all depends on the specifics of the song you’re editing.

When I find the edit points I want, I slightly reduce the bounds of my selection before removing the middle. With Pro Tools, you can always adjust the edit point after the fact, so right now our only concern is to make the beats of each section line up so that the pulse of the music is steady through the edit. The reduced bounds will give me a visual indication I can use to help align the beats of the segments.

I make my selection just smaller than the beats themselves

Now listen to your new edit (no crossfades are applied yet). If you sense that the beat is slightly off, make sure the adjust it now before going on.

Here’s the edit, before adding crossfades:
Inst-edit-nofade by chancesend

With your edit in place, you can turn the cut into a crossfade. I like to start with a crossfade of 40-60ms, making sure the fade is set to Equal Power mode (this will make sure the audio is at a constant volume through the edit). Depending on the kind of music, you will need to adjust the crossfade length. For faster or more rhythmic songs, I use a smaller crossfade. For more melodic or slower songs, I use a longer crossfade.

The placement of the crossfade is also key. I usually place my crossfade just before the beat, so that we avoid flamming the drums. Again, adjust depending on the song.

Here’s the edit with the crossfade:
Inst-edit-wfade by chancesend

The intro and outro edits

The intro and outro edits went through roughly the same process as the instrumental edit. Though here it was vitally important to make sure the lead instruments “made sense” through the edit.

The intro edit without the fade:
Intro-edit-nofade by chancesend

The finished intro edit

The intro edit after crossfading:
Intro-edit-wfade by chancesend

The outro edit without the fade:
Outro-nofade by chancesend

The finished outro edit

The outro edit after crossfading:
Outro-wfade by chancesend

Hopefully, you should notice that the edits without the fades should sound pretty good – the crossfades should only be hiding the instantaneous discontinuity, not masking the sonic differences between the two sections.

Bouncing down

Once I finished the edits, I bounced down the result to WAV. Note that I didn’t add a fade in or a fade out to the track – they are not needed since we were already working with a final mix that presumably had fade ins and outs.

I then used RazorLAME to create a 256kbit MP3 file

Delivery to the dance troupe

Once I had the final MP3 edit, I posted the audio to SoundCloud. I marked it as Private and listed the email addresses of the dance troupe members so they could listen to the track online.

Make sure to mark your track as private, if you are distributing to a select group

Advanced edits

There are several advanced edits when standard crossfades won’t cut it. I won’t go into too much detail, with the hope that you will explore their use yourself.

Extended crossfades

Extended crossfades are crossfades that last more than ~1 second, and work wonders for non-rhythmic sections such as synth pads. In these scenarios, you need to make them long enough so that the crossfade sounds like it occurs naturally in the song. In some cases, I have used crossfades that even extend 20 seconds or more. It’s very important you use Equal Power crossfades here, so that you don’t produce a dip in the volume of the track.

Extended crossfades can also work well in rhythmic sections, but you have to be extra-careful to match the beats properly so that you don’t hear any flamming. This is equivalent to beat-mixing when DJing, but done in an offline fashion.

Unmatched fade curves

Unmatched fade curves are sometimes necessary for edits, when you want a beat to enter at full-volume, but have the pre-edit material continue to fade out (for instance, shortening a non-rhythmic intro).

Conclusion

With just a little bit of effort, you can create professional-sounding fades that most people won’t be able to notice. At least, if they’re not looking for it…

It is easy to look at the external persona of successful people and ask ourselves “why do they have all the luck?” It is even easier to tell ourselves that our lack of luck is caused by others. In many aspects of my life, I see people blaming others. This especially occurs when you have a group of “blamers” talking to eachother. They feed off of their notions that they are not to blame for their own lack of success, and the conversation degenerates and no real solutions are presented.

In music, this commonly takes the form of “Why are they so popular? My music is much better than that other band!”

The fallacy here, of course, is thinking that music quality is the sole factor for success in the music business. Only a little thought is required to realize that items such as networking, promotion, marketing, and drive are MUCH more important than quality.

Mike Venti at Music Think Tank writes about just this in his article 30 Tips For The Typical Musician. Though tongue-in-cheek in nature, lots of people tell themselves just these things.

If you still don’t believe me, look at another industry. Take, for example, the beer market in the USA. If quality were the deciding factor here, then why would beers like Bud Light, Miller Light, and Coors Light, all be at the top of the list? Surely most people haven’t sampled every beer in the world and found that they like those the best? No, they are at the top because they are promoted and marketed like crazy, and have enough quality to appeal to a general audience. Boy bands, Auto-Tune rap artists, and generic pop singers are the Bud Lights of the music world.

This is not to say that some cream doesn’t rise to the top. It’d be tough to find someone who says that The Beatles, Queen, Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson were talentless hacks. But if they didn’t have the personal drive or motivation to succeed at all costs, they definitely wouldn’t have gotten to the top of the charts.

So how does this apply to other aspects of life? Let’s look at the tips, but abstract away the music business.

Practice

The average person will stop practicing or doing homework as soon as they leave school. Nor will they take lessons (or apprentice) from someone who is considered an expert in the field.

This is a good way to get passed-up by those who do practice. And believe me, there are people out there who practice. A lot! They are the ones who you will be resentful of, because they have exceeded your reach or abilities at a much younger age.

Gigs

Consider gigs like the work they are. Everyone, in life, will make mistakes. The key is to accept you will make these mistakes, and resolve to learn from them every time it happens. Don’t stick to a tried-and-true formula in life, unless you’re perfectly happy exactly the way things are. Even then, if you stick to the formula, the world will change around you and you may find yourself out of a job, slowly losing respect with your friends, or considered “old-fashioned”.

And for god sakes, network like there was no tomorrow. This does not mean just handing out business cards. This means establishing working relationships, friendships, a network of people you trust. Respond to emails. Even better, take the time to email people you haven’t talked to in awhile. Remember, most people are passive in this regards.

When you have to rely on others, understand that they make mistakes too. And more importantly, no one will be more invested in your success than you are. So if your boss, or neighbor, or coworker doesn’t seem to care about you as much as you’d like, then you’re probably right. Accept it. Don’t blame them. Or if it truly is a problem, then actively work to change it. Make them understand why they should care, and how they can best help you.

Your friends are not your customers. Let me repeat – your friends are not your customers. They may become your customers, but your business model should definitely not be “market my services to my friends.” They are the people who will support you as you get off the ground, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find friends who will continually pay you enough money to survive. You NEED to branch out beyond them – this involves marketing, promotion, and actually having something to offer that people want.

Sure, send out a Facebook invite if you’re having a gig, looking for extra work, etc. But if you’re relying on that invite to get business, then you’ve just fallen back into the “friend business model” trap. And don’t blame your friends when they don’t respond to your mass email.

Studio

Let’s replace studio with resources. Whether you’re a musician working in a studio, a programmer working in an office, or a hairdresser working out of their home.

If you skimp, people will notice. Some amount of cost-cutting may be necessary (and it’s always good to price-shop), but at some point you cross a threshold that people will notice. Your dingy windowless office. Your beat-up instrument. Your rusty scissors and bulk generic shampoo. Your ripped clothes. You see what I’m getting at, I hope.

I’m guilty of this, too. The lure of saving a buck can be strong, but can get you into trouble. When you see people react by not contacting you as much, don’t blame them – realize it might be a reaction due to the cost-cutting.

Personal

Yes, you will interact with others. Some people will be very successful, and you will resent them. Some people will be amazing, but will be very difficult to work with. Some people will be flaky, some people will be stubborn. Learn how to work with them all, and as a result start becoming easy to work with, yourself.

If you’re resentful of someone, understand why. Then figure out if your resentment is truly about something that person did, or if you’re really resentful about your own lack of drive.

Go above and beyond what you have seen others do. That will set you apart. But if you see someone setting the standard, then don’t blame them no matter how much “inexperience” they have. Instead, show them what experience looks like, and rise above.

After having gone through a few months of writing songs with Emily Zisman, we have had our share of inspired and uninspired production sessions.

When writing Whoring For Hanukkah, we found the songwriting came incredibly easy. I think this was due to a few factors.

A new process

WFH was the first song that we co-wrote together (previous collaborations have been producing one of our own individual songs). Getting out of our respective ruts proved to be very beneficial, as we could bounce ideas off each other and receive direct feedback on these ideas instantaneously. This pair process took the song in a very different direction than either of us would probably have written it.

In the moment, it is very difficult to separate yourself from a lyric you just came up with. But this separation must occur if you are to receive feedback without taking things personally. In the end, I think we were able to avoid several lyrical pitfalls by simply being free to reject an idea as long as we could give a reason.

A focused goal

By simply focusing ourselves on a specific goal (in this case, it was to write a funny holiday song), this limitation actually expanded our creativity. We were required to think within these narrow confines, looking for potential story avenues.

A focused style

Because we needed to write and produce WFH very quickly, we had to focus the production. So we decided to write in a gypsy style, which Emily could emulate quite well in her singing style and I had previous experience on violin. In fact, it was only later on in post-production that we decided to bring in anything else other than a tamborine. This genre limitation further limited our scope, allowing us to spend all of our creative energy on the lyrics.

A great concept

One of the very first things we came up with was the title “Whoring For Hanukkah”. This really helped us with the whole song, as the title gave us the exact framework that we needed to write for. The concept lends itself to an outline quite well:

Woman loses her job, has to make money to buy presents, decides to become an amateur prostitute, and starts to enjoy it.

From that, it was fairly easy to figure out how to progress the story in the verses and bridge. The time was mainly spent coming up with a few lyrical gags and rhymes to tie everything together.

A deadline

The power of pressure played a large part on the end-result of the song. I’m sure that, given another couple of weeks, we could have fleshed out some of the lyrics and music better. But we were operating on the 80/20 rule – 80% of the song is written in 20% of the time. For this project, getting a song written at an 80% level was good-enough for us. If you believe the metaphor, than this decision cut our production time to just 20%!

Luck

Though I would like to think that luck isn’t a part of it, I need to be realistic and say that neither of us are songwriting professionals. As such, we’re going to operate less efficiently than a well-tuned songwriting team that has been going on for years or decades. Hopefully luck will play less of a role the longer we collaborate.

So here we are writing for upcoming songs like Peculiar and December. Though we are still working well as a songwriting team, it isn’t going as smoothly as with WFH. Why might this be? Certainly, the concepts of the songs haven’t been as strong as WFH. And we haven’t set any deadlines for completing the lyrics. And we didn’t limit our genre to anything. As a result, our creative energies are divided up between several different tasks, and the songs haven’t “gelled” yet. I don’t want to say we have writers’ block, but we need to practice and exercise our co-writing process a lot more.

Chris Bolton adds his ideas for overcoming writers’ block in this CD Baby post.

As a solo hobby artist who does more studio work than live work, I constantly struggle to get new listeners to hear my music. The obvious hope is that by exposing as many people as possible to my songs, a few of them might purchase something, and a few of THOSE people might recommend me to someone else. Building that promotional web is hugely important in exponentially increasing the reach of your music.

Artist Josh Rosenthal explains his own take on this, and other grassroots marketing techniques in action, in a podcast he recently did with CD Baby.

Listen to the podcast here.

Up until a few days ago, my sole website has been Chance’s End. Though most of the content there has been about my violin breakbeat-electronica music project, I have lots of information about audio engineering (both behind the console and behind the keyboard) and “making-of” content that I have held off on posting until I found a proper home.

In the next few days,  I plan on refining the site layout a bit to match a style I had for an older version of my website. Then, I’ll begin culling through my saved material and posting bits about my production process every week or so.

In several of the jobs that I have held over the years, I have been put in a creative graphics design role. Not as my primary job, but as part of the “utility intern” I always seemed to become. I guess they saw some sort of creative eye (at least, as creative as engineers get).

Now that I am focusing more and more on music and engineering, I need to scratch my design itch now and again on my own time. Earlier this month, I created three designs for custom t-shirts I could wear out dancing.

Colgada custom tango t-shirt

Here, I’ve taken the toothpaste brand Colgate and turned it into Colgada, a tango move involving spinning both your partner and yourself on one axis. It looks a bit like a spinning V, with both dancers pivoting at roughly the same point on the floor.

Absolut Fusion custom tango t-shirt

I took the ubiquitous look of the Absolut Vodka advertisements, and turned it into Absolut Fusion. Dancing fusion is taking little bits of Tango, Swing and Blues and throwing them all in the same song. I hear there’s actually a Fusion dance night in Portland OR – I’d love to go to that, if only I lived in the area!

Neotango custom tango t-shirt

This one was perhaps a bit too subtle. I took the Nintendo logo and substituted a few letters to get Neotango, which is a reference to a new style of tango music combining electronic productions with tango instrumentation. I’m actually working on a couple of neotango songs myself, for the next album.

This isn’t the first time I have created custom dance-based t-shirts. Last year I created a set of three tango-influenced T-shirts.

Nuevo Inside custom tango t-shirt

This was my first t-shirt design I did. Again, another tango reference – this time, referring to a new style of tango dancing that is becoming popular, especially among younger dancers.

Tango Barbara custom tango t-shirt

Probably my least favorite of the collection. I tried to make a semi-cool logo for Santa Barbara Tango, but it ended up taking on a Black Panther context that I didn’t quite catch while I was creating it.

Swango custom tango t-shirt

Yet another fusion-style dance t-shirt. This one wasn’t based off any existing logo – I just wanted to create a logo from scratch that highlighted the SWing in swango. Truth be told, I am starting to hate the word, but the term is fairly well-recognized within the dance community.

I think my favorite flow is to take a well-known icon, symbol or brand, and parody it to fit a niche market, such as tango dancers. Here are a couple other designs I plan on printing.

Gancho King t-shirt idea

I’m fairly excited about getting this one printed. The “Gancho” took me quite awhile to do, though it still needs some tweaking. For those not in-the-know, a gancho is another tango move. Look it up.

Tango Police t-shirt idea

Thanks to some Santa Barbara dancers for help on this idea (Lora, Nathan, and Karen). It’s pretty bland right now, but fairly true to the original Monopoly source.

I print all of my designs at Printfection , which has much better print quality than the more popular Cafepress. I have printed with other companies in the past, but Printfection’s quality has convinced me to settle with them.

For those wondering how I make my designs, I create all my t-shirts as vector art in Illustrator. For logos, I either find vector sources on the internet (it helps to search for ‘eps’ when looking for vector logos – it’s surprising all the odd places original source art can be found), or I use jpeg images as a template to re-construct the logo myself.

Fonts used in logos are also easy to find by searching for something like ‘colgate font’. And if the font isn’t available, I try to construct letters on my own. Finally, I take the finished image and save it as a high-resolution JPEG (as little compression as possible, and at least 300 DPI or larger). I upload the image to Spreadshirt, and make minor positioning adjustments.  Maybe sometime in the future I will write a detailed guide on how to reconstruct logos in vector format, or how to construct letters to match a logo’s font.

If anyone is interested in purchasing a t-shirt, let me know at info@chancesend.com. I would publish the designs on my Printfection account, but I fear that if I do, they would get deleted as potential copyright infringements (though this falls under fair use as parody, I know companies like Printfection and Cafepress tend to be overly cautious).

Hand of God series

This series shows several collages of humans and the cosmos, in a lighthearted effort to quickly depict several different concepts of an omnipotent being.

The touch of a hand

The image of the V838 Moncerotis red supergiant is from the Hubble imaging satellite (Credit: NASA, ESA and H.E. Bond - STSci). The image of the hand is by Maciej Ciupa of Biskupiec, Poland (ciupa@op.pl)

The huge evergrowing pulsating brain that rules from the center of the ultraworld

The first image is the stellar death of planetary nebula NGC 7027 taken by Hubble (Credit: NASA, H.E. Bond - STSci). The image of the brain is by the Virtual Human Initiative.

There’s a party in my galaxy

The first image is taken by Hubble, and is a Black Eye galaxy that resulted from an abrasive collision (Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), Acknowledgment: S. Smartt (Institute of Astronomy) and D. Richstone (U. Michigan)) The image of the rocker hand is by Chris Sanchez of Franklin Park, IL (iamjamoke@gmail.com)

The overseeing eye

The first image is the glow of a nearby planetary nebula taken by Hubble (Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO)). The eye is a photo by Dora Mitsonia (float_d@yahoo.com).

The wish giver

The first photo is the Trifid Nebula taken by Hubble (Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)). The image of the woman is by Steve Landis.

Demon Series

In contrast with the Hand of God series, this shows the fiery and awe-inspiring aspects of the cosmos, composited with similarly-forboding demon images.

Demonic spawn of the cosmos

The first image is the burst of a star in the core of a galaxy, imaged by Hubble (Credits: NASA, Gerald Cecil (University of North Carolina), Sylvain Veilleux (University of Maryland), Joss Bland-Hawthorn (Anglo- Australian Observatory), and Alex Filippenko (University of California at Berkeley)). The second image is a portrait by Nicolas Abadjian of New York, NY (nicodemus1019@yahoo.com)

Demon inside the fire

The solar image was taken by the SOHO Solar Imaging satellite (Credit: Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA). The devil drawing is a sketch by an unknown internet source

Planet Repurpose Series

Taking images of the bodies orbiting our sun and placing them in situations where they do not belong.

From whence the moon came

The galactic image is the Messier 104 "Sombrero" galaxy taken by Hubble (Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)). The image of the moon is taken by the ASTER satellite (Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)

The giant spider of Saturn’s Tethys moon

The photo of Saturn's Tethys moon is taken by the Cassini deep space explorer. The image of the spider is by Jorge Del Toro of Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico (bullgeo@hotmail.com)

Happy birthday, Earth!

The moon image is from the ASTER satellite (Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team). The bow was photographed by Jyn Meyer from Spokane, WA (sxc@jynmeyer.com)

What a lovely night

The earth image is a multi-sensor composite photo created by Reto Stockli with the help of Alan Nelson, under the leadership of Fritz Hasler, using NOAA's Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) + others. The second image is the M51 whirlpool galaxy photographed by Hubble (Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

Rings of Earth

The photo of Saturn's rings is from Hubble (Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Clarke (Boston University), and Z. Levay (STScI)). The photo of Earth is by the Galileo spacecraft.

Ariel View series

Mainly concerned with arial views from the Iknonos, Modis, and Aster imaging sensors, this series seeks to change their focus through photoshopping.

It began in Afrika

The arial image of Africa's dust storm is from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite. The images of the smoke is from Lucretious of Salonika, Thessaloniki, Greece (lucretious@gmail.com)

This is the big one

Hurricane Kate is photographed by the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite. The galaxy is courtesy of Hubble (Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

A Vatican hurricane

The photo of Hurricane Kate is from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite. The image of the Vatican's spiral staircase is by Roman Tutschek of Wien, Wien, Austria (r.tutschek@designkanzlei.com)

The US Navy on a Venitian holiday

The arial photograph of Venice is by the Ikonos imaging satellite. The photograph of the battleship is taken from a Pearl Harbor photograph from Ikonos.

That is one large island

The image of the island is from the ASTER imaging satellite (Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team). The interior galaxy is a Hubble photograph of the Tarantula Nebula showing many generations of stars (Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA / STScI / NASA))

Worshipping the Suez canal

The overhead image of the Suez canal is from the ASTER imaging satellite (Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team). This has been pasted into a stained-glass image by Michael Slonecker of Windermere, Florida (slonecker@earthlink.net)

Skysitter

The overhead arial shot of Denver is the first public image of Denver, generated by the Ikonos satellite. The shot of the child's legs is from Gabe Guterres of Soquel, CA (beatnikman@juno.com)

ET Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel tower image is by Riccardo Lisoni of Italy (liric58@yahoo.it). This is composited with a photo of the WFPC2 galaxy (Credit: NASA, John Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and James Westphal (California Intitute of Technology))

Sometimes when you venture out on a journey, you’re not quite sure why you’re doing it. Such was our daytrip to Montepulciano, about a 45-minute drive from Cortona where we were staying.

Montepulciano, in my mind, was never anything special. What did it have that Cortona didn’t? More churches, narrow roads and city walls. Not only that, but we were making the drive in the pouring rain.

A charming road along the outskirts of Montepulciano

Though it was pouring, when we found a spot to park, we still ventured into the city. I had a recommendation from a guide book that suggested a small osteria for lunch. The only problem was that the landmarks the map listed in the guidebook didn’t seem to correspond to the ones we were seeing in front of us. At all. And when it’s pouring down like a waterfall, no one’s really too into your cries of “let’s just take this street, maybe we’ll figure out where we are!” But after 15 minutes of wandering in the rain, we found our bearings and headed towards our lunch destination.

Upon seeing it, it really wasn’t anything special – a little hole-in-the-wall place serving seemingly simple fare, inexpensive but not ridiculously so. Sort of akin to a small tavern or a quaint mountain ski lodge. My gnocci was good, but nothing compared to the heavenly fare we had been dining on in Cortona over the past few days. T, on the other hand, ordered a mushroom pasta. These were no ordinary mushrooms, for the millimeter-thick slices were orange on the outside and pearl white on the inside. We both agreed that the dish both looked and tasted divine.

When we were finished with the meal, we asked the owner what the mushrooms were. He motioned for us to wait for a moment, and returned from the kitchen with a few golf ball-sized objects in his hand. He told us a long story about their origin, and the words we picked out were “funghi dell’uovo” and “solo settembre”. Thus, we realized that these “egg mushrooms” were only harvested in September, meaning we had come at the perfect time. Now we knew why we had driven all the way to Montepulciano.