Songwriting Books are ten a penny these days! When I think of the hundreds of songwriting books I've spent money on and read cover to cover over the years the actual value I've got from them has been minimal. The problem is, most books cover a huge amount of musical theory and tell you how you must write 'from the heart' using your emotions to ensure your lyrics are deep and meaningful  but this doesn't actually give you a practical guide on EXACTLY what to do when you sit down to write a song. Should you start with lyrics first or music first? How do you get inspiration? How do you come up with a melody? How do you make sure your lyrics make sense? How do you make your songs memorable?

It's these questions and more that go unanswered by pretty much all the songwriting books I've ever read. So how do you learn to write songs? Well, my advice would be to try my three favorite songwriting methods.

METHOD ONE: Use a drum/percussion loop and aim to write 10 (Yes 10) songs over the top of that one loop. Don't worry about quality of your ideas, or even if they're full completed songs just get yours ideas down and don't stop till you have 10 new song ideas.

METHOD TWO: Come up with a chord sequence or riff and improvise 10 separate melodies using whatever lyrics spring to mind over the top. Again don't worry if the words make sense or how good you think your ideas are, it's all about getting the ideas out of your head and into the world.

METHOD THREE: Write 10 melodies in your head. Just improvise lyrics and melodies in your head and get them ALL down onto an audio recorder. You can worry about putting the music to your ideas at a later time. Think about the "Naaaa naa na na na na naaa" section at the end of Hey Jude, by The Beatles. Try starting out by making up a hooky wordless melody like that one. If it works for the Fab Four, it works for us!

If you sit down to write and don't stop until you have at least 30 ideas, (10 ideas using each of the methods above) you cannot fail but end up with enough quality ideas to finish at least 3 songs! Try it, I promise you it works!