The production process behind "Give Up" involved Tamborello, based in the L.A. community of Silver Lake, sending Gibbard, living north in Seattle, pieces of instrumental music on burned CD-R's. Gibbard would pick up the disc from Sub Pop's corporate office and return to his home in the Capitol Hill district. He would insert the CD into his portable Discman player and walk around his neighborhood, humming melodies to the music. He also carried a notebook to compile his ideas, which he would use when home to write lyrics. Gibbard would then manipulate the recordings on his laptop, augmenting the beats with additional guitar, keyboards, and live drums. He dubbed his home studio "Computerworld". Gibbard, who had always found writing music to be more difficult than composing lyrics, found the arrangement particularly appealing. "It was really great to get a little package every month or two – 'Two new songs!'" he noted in 2002. "Sometimes I'd say, 'I want to move that part and this part,' and it was really fun to have such autonomy in the writing; I could pretty much do whatever I wanted."