As you may recall, my brother gave me Will Hodgkinson’s previous body of work called Guitar Man which I blogged on back in May. Well, he also gave me his second book entitled Song Man. Having successfully learned enough about the Guitar to complete his mission of playing a gig, Will now took on the task of learning how to actually write a song. The goal of this effort is to learn enough about composing a song to write an original work and record it. I definitely enjoyed the guitar learning saga and was hoping his second book would be just as entertaining (although I currently do not have a thirst to develop my own songs so I did have a little bit lower expectations compared to the fact I too have been experiencing the torture of learning the six string.) The gang was all back from Guitar Man so it flowed very nicely from the first book. Similar to the process in that book, Song Man is constructed around Will’s journey to seek out experts in the field, gain insights into their approach to making great songs and then tried to apply those nuggets of genius into his own songs. The disappointing aspect of these books is that it doesn’t come with a CD of the created material. After awhile, you start wondering how the transformations in the various songs actually sound, was the advice he was getting from the experts actually improving the work or was it stifling his creativity. Something tells me I am going to have to seek out a copy of his pressed songs and take a listen. The nice thing about it, I will have a complete understanding of how the song came to be which has always interested me more than just hearing the actual song. This is probably why I like VH1’s Behind the Music and their Unplugged show so much. In those short sessions, the artist usually gives a glimpse into the creativity process, the catalyst for their particular piece of art. Of course every once in awhile you get the heart wrenching “it was just luck” or an “accident” when questioned how a particular riff was constructed or a particular beat was established.
From Song Man’s perspective, he must be commended for setting a goal, formulating a process to achieve that goal and ultimately delivering on his Life List entry. In comparison to Guitar Man, I thought the first book was a little better read, but I still enjoyed this particular work and now looking forward to what journey he dreams up next. It actually just occurred to me that I am developing a common theme for some of my favorite types of books to read. Many of them tend to involve the subject putting himself under some type of challenge followed by a detailed account of the journey to that end. Both Will and probably my favorite author A.J. Jacobs fit this description to a T. I would definitely recommend Will’s (and Jacobs’) if you also like this type of theme.
Follow the link below to read my highlights in Song Man
