Hey kids.

This argument has always been a pet peeve of mine. How important is training? If you can't speak the language, you'll write some pretty shitty poetry. You need a vocabulary to work with.

There are some people who receive a very small amount of training, but become fabulous musicians because they have a great instinct and can learn how to do absolutely everything within their limitations. However, those are still limitations. If Muddy Waters had had some formal training. Think of how much more he could have done (and yes, he did one hell of a lot).

Getting back to my poetry analogy, how could knowing more words and technique possibly be a bad thing? The better poet is probably still going to be the person who knows that there are more words that rhyme with "use" than "utilize", but at least he will have more tools to work with.

Paul