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>Danny, I see a major difference in >comparing guitar & vocal lessons to a song >critique. In taking instrument or vocal >lessons, you are paying an instructor to >teach you how to read music, understand >music theory, solo over chord changes, and >technique. These are things that are based >on solid, foundational music principles, >not opinion.

Yes, but I can make the same argument for teaching the craft of songwriting. While you cannot teach the talent nor perserverance needed to succeed in the business, you most certainly can teach the craft behind writing songs. Similarly you cannot teach someone to be a brilliant artist or sculptor like Michaelangelo, but there's a university in Florence Italy called the Academy, that young artists and sculptors flock to so they can study the art. This university was actually founded by Michaelangelo because he believed that much in studying the craft.

In songwriting for example, you can identify when someone's chorus falls short musically because it lacks contrast from the verse. It's also easy to identify when point of views have been switched between the verse and chorus, or rhyme schemes between sections. And while I agree with you that there are those that do try to take advantage of songwriters (which I also do not tolerate), I would argue that there are certainly those that can and do make a difference in some songwriter's life. Studying with Sheila Davis made a huge difference in my wife, Sara Light's life and her career.

Here's just a partial list of songwriters off the top of my head who have come up through the ranks of taking songwriting workshops and taking classes.

Diane Warren
Marvin Hamlisch
Don Schlitz
Hugh Prestwood - "The Song Remembers When"
Mike Reid - "I Can't Make You Love Me"
Mark Sanders - "I Hope You Dance"
Michael Peterson - "From Here To Eternity"
Carolyn Dawn Johnson - This year's ACM winner for best new vocalist. She was actually in the same ASCAP workshop as Sara and me and attended the NSAI song camps.

On a more personal note, out of our own writer's group class that we run at our house every spring, last year 6 out 7 of our students got accepted into the ASCAP country workshop (only 30 students were accepted out of 300 applicants). Two of those students have since gone on to get staff writing deals. One of those students was the grand prize winner in the Lilith Fair Songwriting Contest with a song that came through our writer's group.

It may just be that critiquing or mentoring is not a route that particularly works for you (which is entirely possible). Or it may be that you've never found the "right" instructor (which is also entirely possible). But it would be difficult to make the argument that it doesn't work for anyone...in my opinion, as with everything else in the business, there's always more that you can learn.

Best wishes,

-Danny
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Danny Arena/Sara Light
The Songwriting Education Resource
www.craftofsongwriting.com