Jacob's interest in playing a 5-string acoustic guitar tuned to DAEAD came from his unconventional exposure to the guitar as a young musician—a combination of having played bass and being exposed to a 4-string tenor guitar tuned in fifths.
Though he was a self-described guitar novice at the time, his sophisticated understanding of music and harmonic relationships allowed him to hear the voicing possibilities of a 5-string guitar with those unique tuning intervals. "I started to imagine a sort of language of guitar playing where it was half in fourths and half in fifths because I think both are really helpful and important," he said in a podcast conversation with Paul Davids.