Thanks guys. I mean, I kinda know what Couch means, people dont hang pictures of Jason Blume on their wall...maybe some eccentric ones do! And that the great artists are out there ready to be studied on their records.

But some people need guidance, they may not pick up why something is great off a record, but if somebody points it out to them, they say ahhhh yes! If you dont know what you are listening for you might as well be listening in another language.

I believe that a good amount of it is learned. What kind of a song would you write, if you had never heard a song before?

Anything you could possibly write is a take off from something you already heard, especially with only 12 notes in a scale to work with. You can try to be different, and groundbreaking, which is all good, but you didnt invent music, and you didnt invent language, or poetry, it's all handed down.

Knowing that, it's safe to say every songwriter learned alot from osmosis, whter or not they are conscious of it or not.