Siavash Shams; Singer, songwriter and record producer with his lovely family

You don't need traditional music education at all. People sometimes think songwriters need to read music or play an instrument in order to do what we do. That's not true. My instrument is my voice. Producers send me tracks — all the music, minus words — and I write lyrics and record myself singing them to fill out the song. I think you need a musical sensibility, and you need to work with other people who understand the mechanics of music, but you don't need much of a music background to write the song.