Riff’s Official Guide to Songwriting

Are you a budding songwriter who can’t get past the first verse? Or a seasoned one whose choruses keep falling flat?

This is the book Jamie Stanforth and his songwriting partner Riff wish they’d been handed at the start. Jamie has been a singer in pub and semi-pro bands, toured Germany, and spent twenty-five years as a DJ watching dancefloors empty the moment he played the wrong song. So he’s learned the hard way what works and what doesn’t. Now he runs Tune From You, writing personalised songs for birthdays, weddings, funerals and just about everything between.

Together they take you through the craft from the ground up: titles, structure, rhyme, melody, chords, and above all making words fit music so they sing themselves. Then they cover the bit most books skip, writing one song for one person on one particular day, where every line has to be true.

Every story about a real songwriter is sourced in the Notes. The rest are their own mistakes, told honestly and with the names removed.

Bring a pencil. You’ll be marking stresses.