1) Start life in a non-musical, working class family and drop hints about how much you want to play the most expensive and biggest instrument you can think of.
2) Get access to said instrument at the age of 17 only by living as a lodger with another family and have to ask every day when it would be convenient to play. Then learn by ear because you can't afford lessons and end up playing better than the landlady does, who is having lessons, so that she hates you all the more.
3) Leave and go to university to do subjects totally unrelated to music because you've got no formal music qualifications.
4) Pay for your own piano lessons out of your student loan while using out of tune pianos in student practice rooms whenever you can, especially the one right below the halls of residence official's flat who's such a battle-axe she immediately complains bitterly about the noise.
5) Move back to a small town to do a music course equivalent to two 'A' levels just because they've got better pianos than the same course in London.
6) Work on properly learning to play the piano at the age of 21 by working for less than the minimum wage in a local piano shop and getting a piano for trade price and then practise for four hours a day in an attempt to catch up with all those people who had piano lessons from the age of 5.
7) Compare yourself with virtuoso level pianists and try to play the stuff they play. Relentlessly berate yourself for not being as good as them even though they started playing at the age of 2 and you only started getting lessons at the age of 19.
8) Keep focussing on your songs and piano skills and playing a real piano not a stupid little keyboard instead of trying to make contacts in the music industry because you don't much like going out to pubs and drinking beer anyway.
9) Hit the height of your skill about 5 years before social media and computers to record on come into play so that you miss out on all the opportunities to record for free and promote your work for free. Be slow to adapt to new music industry model through lack of funds to get a computer because you spent all your money on piano lessons and moving your piano from place to place.
10) Take music and writing songs so seriously that you can't bear to do it in a half-arsed way or 'just for fun' so you always practise loads before any gig. Which is rather tragic as each gig costs you £40 in cab fare for transporting your full length keyboard (that someone names an ironing board because of the cheap, rickety stand you've got for it because you couldn't afford a better one) and be forced to give up in the end through sheer poverty and trauma.
[Look out for the next post on 'how to recover from being a tortured musician'! I'm nothing if not helpful, right?]
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