Songwriter Max Greenwood recently moved to a house which has a piano room with great morning light, he tells Sinéad Gleeson

WE recently moved from a house with a studio, which I built in a wooden shed at the bottom of our garden. It was a great little sunny place, and I completed In the Bloodthere.

I don't know if it's my imagination, but that year we had a bumper crop of Brussels sprouts, which I reckon were coaxed into fullest expression by subsonics from the studio.

When it came to finding another house, we happened across this one, which came complete with a piano and a lovely room to work in. It gets great light in the morning - which is when I like to practise and write - and it's also big enough for band rehearsals.

Central to the room is the piano, but it holds other musical paraphernalia: guitar, ukulele, percussion, harmonicas, Romanian harp, Bentley Rhythm Ace drum machine, laptop, microphones, notebooks, pencils, the stereo, CDs and vinyl.

A tidy room to work in is ideal, although not always the reality. Here, there are also boxes full of our little one's toys, which usually get exploded across the room in the afternoons.

The most important thing in the space is quiet (when it comes), light and all the music contained in the CDs and vinyl - the source of my creativity really. A lot of music for songs comes while practising scales . . . fingers go through the motions, and a spark forms into something.

Some days, I do long improvisations, and record them. I tend to work alone, but also enjoy collaborative work, and a couple of songs on the album are co-written.

Many of my songs begin to form from a feeling around an observed pattern of things in the world, and I get a collection of words to try and hint and point towards that feeling, and then try and let it grow from there.

If I'm writing music to lyrics, it can be quite quick; if it's the other way round or together, it can take a lot longer, although it can lead to some of the better and more rewarding songs. Some take months.

Leonard Cohen says he can spend a day on one line, so I take solace in that. I try to stay open to songs forming in different ways at different stages.

• Max Greenwood's debut album In The Bloodis out now. He is touring Ireland with his band in July.
• For more Musical Rooms, see  www.sineadgleeson.com.