Anyone care to ELI5 this for me? This seems like a big deal but I have no idea what it means lol.

Hmm. Any insights as to why this is different than a franchise tag? This feels a bit underwhelming

I don’t listen to those bands much so I can’t give you specific answers, but I’ll try to give some general advice -

The slow but steady way is to learn as much music in that genre as possible. Eventually you’ll start to naturally sound like what you’re learning/playing. If you’re goal oriented, do your best to learn an entire album inside and out. Be able to play the entire thing by heart. The real goal here though is the journey, not the destination. When it’s not fun anymore, quit and move on to a different one. Maybe come back to it later.

If you want to accelerate the learning process, transcription and analysis will take you a long way. For example, what are the chords? How are they voicing them? How do they change and move from one another? What is the key? Are all the chords actually in the key? How is the melody structured? Is it busy or sparse? Outlining chord tones? What is the tone/timbre of the guitar? Of the other instruments? Of the song as a whole? How does that affect the song? Would the feeling of the song change with they changed? What is the rhythm of the guitar/melody/drums/bass. What is the instrumentation? The tempo? The arrangement? What emotion does this song make you feel like and why? What is the songs identity? For most of these questions, if not all of then, there are no wrong answers. Right answers only require a good faith argument and evidence to back it up.

When you’ve found answers to some of those questions for a handful of songs, what are the similarities and differences? How significant are they and how do they affect the song?

With all that being said, remember -

• This is not a quick process at all
• No matter how hard you try your songs will sound different. That’s not only completely fine and expected, but its encouraged! Take ideas from your fav songs and mash them up. Do random shit on top of it. Experiment! Be different!
• Again, not a quick process at all
• These things should be fun, and don’t do them if it feels like a chore. Music is fun! That’s why we play! Don’t lose sight of that with some arbitrary goal like this in mind.

I know that’s a bunch of word vomit so if you’d like me to expand on any of this I’d be happy to.

TLDR; learn more songs and try to articulate why you like them :)

Same, except I’ll clip my keys onto my belt loop like a janitor lol. Keeping them in my pocket with my wallet gets too bulky and they feel safer clipped in.