@Rylan Lacroix wait…really!?!? Like tinned fish???

@Frank Raymond I think coffee is mandatory for me too. But pretty much just having a cup around until 3 PM is mandatory regardless of the food that goes with it :-)

@Stephen Edgell you're right, and the practice does fix that, but I think doing the spider exercise that's at the beginning of the workouts will in particular help your fingers limber up. Usually that stiffness has a lot more to do with your brain connecting to your fingers, being able to send a signal to them fast than it does your fingers actually being stiff themselves.

@Stephen Edgell that makes a lot of sense. I’m glad it’s moving in the right direction 😊

This is such a great question. The truth is, by the time you write a song, no matter what you're taking inspiration from, you're going to be so far away from it, it will be unrecognizable. There's so many components to a song, and especially when you're asking what makes it good live, you're dealing with so many variables—from how the drums are played to how the instruments interact together to how the sections go together. Your best course of action is to analyze the song in as much detail as you can. What's happening in the lyrics? What's happening in the chorus? What is it about? What's the title like? Is it a clever title? Is it a specific title? Is it whatever the case might be? Just really dig into those things. Then figure out what about the track, the vibe, the song makes it work so well as an opener. Think about all the little things like: - The energy - How it builds - What the tempo is - What the chords are - That kind of a thing. then try to get something going that has that sort of feel, that sort of energy, that sort of chord progression, that sort of vibe then come back and take the most important components of the lyric and write your own looking at the lyrics, really quick. The title's not particularly clever. He's just saying he's a brand new man because he's with her. "But I saw the light, I've been baptized." We sort of have that play on it being a hymn more than that, it's got that big, anthemic, easy-to-sing chorus that the song opens with, which makes it exciting so your goal is to come up with something like that to build the song around? 😊

@Jake Groft so - boom - there’s you job Make the thing you love. One thing that can be a really cool ‘hack’ is make a list of all the things in the song that aren’t as good as it could be That’s hard to do in such a great song but there’s a story of a guy who ran a Michelin star restaurant in New York and they were like ranked number 99 in the world and he wanted to be number one So he took his whole team to the best restaurant in the world, which was also in New York at the time And instead of making a list of everything that was great he had to make a list of everything could be better. The food was perfect, and the wine was great. But they had like three options for beer and really bad coffee to go with dessert So they made those two things among a bunch of others to be their priority because it was what other people were not doing. The next year they came back and they were number one The idea isn’t you don’t have to have food. Everybody knows you have to upgrade food. You have to have a really catchy chorus. Everybody knows you have to really catchy chorus. What are the 3 to 5 things in that song when you play it you wish were a little different or better?

Welcome!! You just started 3 days ago!?!? That's amazing :) How has it been going? What did you learn first?

I really like Mississippi John Hurt. It's acoustic blues and he's my favorite. I know it's controversial but I like the early Joe Bonamassa records - Blues deluxe in particular. How about you - what are you top 2 or 3?