Day 3 of my Black Friday Project was a bit of a spontaneous one. I jumped on a quick live stream to give you an update on where the song is at, and I also had a very real “adulting” task to do: pick a winner for my Antelope Audio Zen Quadro giveaway. So yes—“Winning Decisions” is partly about songwriting choices, and partly about me literally making a winning decision live on stream. On the music side, I’m writing this one differently than my usual “acoustic guitar + pour my heart out” method. This time a plugin inspired the initial music, and the lyric idea is developing as a story in my head rather than being fully written up front. I’ve got piano as the main foundation, bass (simple, but it works), drums that I sketch in and refine later, some percussion, Hammond organ, strummed acoustic guitars left and right, and a bunch of electric guitars for texture and a harmony moment in the final chorus. I also talked through how fussy I am about lyrics being singable—good poetry on a page isn’t the same as words that actually sound right when sung. I also shared what’s slowing me down: I’m batch-recording other videos, and I’m waiting on a pair of Cali Audio monitors (FedEx delivered them in two halves, because of course they did). Switching from 8-inch monitors to 5-inch is going to be a change, so I’ll be doing room correction and a lot of listening to learn them before I mix the track properly. Giveaway winner: Graeme Warren (UK).