JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Blume article

Oh, of course you have to learn. And you can absolutely learn the mechanics of songwriting from a book. But mechanics only come into play after you get the initial idea. And no book in the world can teach you where those ideas are. And if your intention is to innovate, no book can teach you how to expand beyond what has already been done in your creative field. All Blume's book can do is show you what's already been commercial successful and then recommend you stay within those fences. Why you'd rather do that than go directly to the source and just acquire a large record collection and listen to it, I don't know.

As Mr. Miyagi said wonderingly..."you learn karate from book?"

Actually books teach how NOT to innovate, lol. Which can work if your intention is to make money writing superhooks and such.

But books like Sheila Davis craft of lyric writing I found to be an incredible read, I learned things I didnt know existed, and maybe the writers of the songs didnt know they were doing.

If your a non performing songwriter, trying to pitch to nashville say, you kind of have to play the uniform game. And that maybe just cause the publisher thinks he knows what people want to hear.

Alll I know is if you start out writing, and two years later, you are writing better songs than when you started, you IMPROVED. Maybe you learned from yourself, but your overal talent didnt change

Well done Bugsey!

Yes well said indeed.Talent is not learned but needs shaping by those that have gone on before.That's why we need coaches in sports.They take raw talent and shape and teach the tricks of the trade.If the raw talent is not there to start with,all that teaching will not produce a star.You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. LOL

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.

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.

Blume hasn't made a mark since 2000.

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!

Bugsey...you're missing the point. A book on its own isn't instruction. Furthermore, players have to try out for teams to see if they're good enough for a coach to spend time instructing them. You have to audition to get into Julliard. Anyone can buy a book, learn some basics and then post on the internet or pay for expensive demos of bad songs.

It's my belief that if you have talent, most of those books won't do much for you other than show you some mechanics. But mechanics isn't the hard part...the hard part is coming up with strong, innovative ideas that will stand the test of time. Steve Earle said Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark gave him good pointers on writing story songs. That was worthwhile instruction from great songwriters that bore fruit. If some people on these sites are getting that kind of results from those books, good for them. I've never seen it.

Well yeah, but even if they were the worlds greatest, they still might not have any success, and somebody bad might.

The point were probably both missing is that you learn to learn, (from any source) but what alot of them are teaching is learn how to make money, which wont happen anyway. Guitar teachers dont take kids and teach them how to be rock stars, they teach them how to play guitar.

But lyricists are lucky, at least they have guides, musicians dont have that kind of reference, aside from learning covers and trying to rewrite them

You're good at lyrics, are you living in a Mansion?

I'm a fairly happy person, I've gotten further with writing than I ever thought I would...and I would never live in a mansion.

That's good. Obviously you do it because you enjoy it and dont golf. Thing is, there is no real way of knowing if we are good.

The definition of good changes with every person you ask.

Great thread.