Originally Posted by couchgrouch
This topic is like CNN's coverage of that Malayasian plane...it just won't die.

I specifically said you can learn the mechanics of a song from a book. My point was this...that's only going to get you to first grade. I am not saying you don't need others' help or guidance and I never have. Hell, I needed my wife's help to program our new coffee maker.

The analogy was made about players and coaches. That actually makes my point. Players have to try out for teams and then coaches give them personalized attention. You can't get that from a book...esp ones designed for mass consumption. Which is why I have nothing against Julliard. I've had this discussion many times on these sites here and elsewhere and they often end with others angrily defending Blume's book, Pat pattison's and others with an evangelical fervor but almost always declining to demonstrate with their own work just what they learned from those books. I still say, if you aspire to mediocrity, those books(along with all the 1000s of mentors and workshops) are for you. Otherwise you're better off by yourself in a room full of records and movies trying to carve out your own rhyme from the marble of reason.


I had never seen this debate, it was actually you who resurfaced it from 2008! I wasnt arguing with you either, simple point was the you can learn from a book. I played in bands in high school, everybody took a shot at writing songs, and they all sucked.

It wasnt that they werent talented, it was they didnt know how to write a song. They wrote bs songs about girls, which didnt exist, cause they figured that was what they should be writing cause it was kind of the standard.

Jason Blume im sure made alot more money selling to other songwriters than selling songs. To my knowledge, Sheila Davis has NEVER had any commercial success, but she clearly knew her stuff when she wrote that book. Her book destroys anything written since.

it;s like the real estate "moguls" you see on TV, with their "secrets" to success. If they are so loaded, why in the hell do they want my 20 bucks? Cause it's easier to make money off of me than it is selling houses.

I feel that if the insider tricks were so useful, they wouldn't be publishing it, they wait until all of that has dryed up, and THEN tell us about it.

Sheila Davis book in my opinion was a "real" book. Not a how to get rich scheme but a real lesson on songwriting. Some of the other ones...ya, money.

Talent and TIMING will always supercede how to's. But im sure somewhere in the world as we speak, there is a Bob Dylan, out digging ditches, who doesnt know he's the next Bob Dylan.

Just as there is some guy with incredible football skill, who doesnt even know because sports were never part of his family, and he never tried. If he tries, and thinks hey im pretty good at this, instruction can help him get there faster.

But we're all fighting the same fight!