Day 18: Reading

To settle my writer's block, I've decided to do some reading. It has helped influence my writing process, while letting me take a step back from my note pad. I've been reading two books, Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents by Bruno Nettl and Bob Dylan by Anthony Scaduto.

I first started reading Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, which helped me understand what folk music is as a genre, how it is generated, and how it travels. The thing that separates folk music from any other genre is instead of being written down on sheet music and shared exactly how it was written, it is shared by word of mouth and changes each time it is shared. One example given was that if a father came up with a song and shared it with his three sons, the three sons could leave home with the one song, and come back with three different versions based on where they went. I also learned that folk music "is normally created by untrained, non professional musicians, and performed by singers and players with little or no theoretical background," which I found interesting because I am untrained and have little theoretical background. After a while I had to stop reading because the book started going into complex music theory, which I just couldn't understand.

And so I switched over to Bob Dylan, which so far has been a very fascinating book on Bob Dylan's life. I've read a lot about his younger life and his early songwriting process. An interesting thing is, he started writing poetry, which later turned into songs, much like how I started with simple poetry and then converted the text into song lyrics. I plan on continuing to reading this book so I can learn more about Bob Dylan's influences, that way I can gain some influence for my own song writing.