Songwriter Jamie Houston contributed to each of the three High School Musical projects. He shared some of his insights into songwriting with us.

You got into this business at a pretty young age. How did you do it?

I always tried to surround myself with people who were better than me. I started out when I was 17 years old. I was in a band, and I'd try to meet people, write songs and try to get a record deal.

In Nashville, where I'm from, I got a job in a restaurant where musicians hung out, and when I was busing tables, I would go meet people and shake hands. I met one guy whose "survival" gig was working as a tape copy guy at MCA Music. He wanted to be a songwriter too and we got to be friends. We started writing together and we'd go over there and hang out.

In Nashville, songwriting is almost like a job, and people go to work from 10 to 5 every day and try to write songs. I got to know them and they realized I didn't want anything from them other than to hang out and learn. One, J.D. Martin, was a pretty successful country writer, but he wrote pop as well, which is what I wanted to learn. He took pity on me, and we wrote a song and we got to be friends and eventually we wrote a song that got covered and ended up being a #1 contemporary Christian tune. His publisher at Warner-Chappell liked the song and met me and it led to a production deal.

What motivated you to get into writing music for film and TV?

I started out as an artist in bands, and found that I had more of a love for writing as opposed to performing because I could do it at my house and not have to live in a van.

I was really interested in movies at an early age, and there was also a point in time about five years ago when people stopped selling records because of downloading. So I got a little more involved in film because I felt it was an untapped resource, and I hadn't really gotten involved in it.

So I left the company I was working with—I was a staff writer at Warner-Chappell, and I had been working with people like Jessica Simpson, Macy Gray, Santana and Steven Tyler. I had a friend who worked at Disney.

So you signed with Disney? Why did the move make a difference?

Before that, I had gotten a few songs placed in movies, but the relationship with the studio allowed me to go meet with music supervisors I'd not had a relationship with before. it kind of leveled the playing field. There were people like Diane Warren and Desmond Child who were getting placements all the time, and when you send in a song and just hope somebody listens to it, it's really difficult to know if they even heard it.

Once I started with Disney, I wanted to get into features and animation. But there was a Disney Channel project called The Cheetah Girls; they were short on a song for the film and they asked me to take a shot—and it turned into the first [song] they had that sold.

How does your previous songwriting experience influence your writing for musicals?

I've gotten to do the more pop- and rock-oriented songs, so I got to inject some of my pop sensibilities into it. But you still have to drive the [musical's] story with the lyric. You still have to get from point A to point B. So if they're going to break up at the end of the song, you have to make sure you get to that point within the context of the lyric. The concept of the song is predetermined before you start.