I think the Blume is off the Rose.

Now that I know that Jason Blume is a member of JPF and that he offers free songwriting classes, I am less cynical of his industry- the one that caters to educating songwriters. I won two Jason Blume CD's in a song contest a few years ago. One was about lyric writing and one about melody writing. They included some good exercises but like anything else worth learning, you have to apply what is being taught. That is harder than it sounds. If you have complete faith in a methodology or a particular teacher, you will naturally apply religiously what they say, and I am sure you will get more out of it. For me, the problem I had with Jason's class (which I took here in Fort Worth), and with his instructional CD's, is that I was not completely convinced that I wanted to learn what he had to teach. I knew he was enormously successful but I didn't care for the songs he wrote. Now I read Jimmy Webb's book and I was glued to the pages because I love his songwriting. I don't have the same love for Jason Blume's songs. He is a great guy, very informative, very encouraging; but it really came down to the question- do I want to write the kind of songs that he writes? The answer for me was no. Still I learned a great deal from him about the industry and I am sure I have a lot more to learn from him.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein