I’m watching the fascinating film about the Beatles, Get Back, produced by Peter Jackson.

There is an amazing segment when Paul McCartney is playing a riff, which materialises before our eyes into the song Get Back. It’s amazing because we know the song so well. We hear McCartney mould the melody line to the verses before our eyes, and the hooky title line emerges whole soon after. We watch it all happening.

The cool thing is, that most songwriters will recognise the process. Messing about with tunes and words, that sounds like nothing much to start with…until they start to sound like something.

You and I might never write a universally famous song. But we, like Paul McCartney, can proudly call ourselves songwriters when we produce something that previously didn’t exist, seemingly out of thin air.

It’s magic.