I had a great morning teaching songwriting to year 8 pupils (12-13 years old) today.

I can’t share recordings with you – for various reasons I have to keep a slight distance between the school work and my personal online life – but I can share with you a couple of thoughts that occured to me:-

Experimentation is vital – the pupils that made the best progress were those who were willing to try things out and not be too precious about their work. There is a cliché in education that the classroom should be a place where pupils are ‘free to fail’ – that they should not be afraid to get things wrong because that fear can stop you trying out no ideas.

The same is true of songwriting – make mistakes, try stuff that might not work because even if a lot fo the time it doesn’t, plenty of times it will.

Originality is learned – even my most creative pupils weren’t writing songs that sounded hugely original. But that’s okay, because they were using ideas that were new to them – within their frame of reference they were being original.

What does that say for all of us? You can only be original within the parameters you know – if all you know is current top 40 pop and the X Factor you’ll write songs that fit within that. If you aim to something more original you’re going to have to expand your horizons as a listener and music fan. Listen to more – find music that’s new to you and work out what makes it new and exciting.

Songwriting is fun – I knew this already of course, but there’s nothing like two hours of songwriting with 30 lively 13 year olds to remind you exactly how much fun this artform is.

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