1. Remove all expectations, just have fun. Playing an instrument or producing music is hard, especially when you want to sound like a professional musician who's been doing it for years, and nobody does when they first start playing, or even until they’ve been doing it so long that they don’t even think about it. This is the biggest deterrent from creativity for a lot of people, they expect themselves to be great without practicing to become great, and the best way to practice in music is to have fun on an instrument, and playing around with melodies and chords you’ve learned. Just find the joy in playing your instrument or producing music instead of expecting yourself to be the fictional rockstar you see yourself as in your dreams, because it takes time and effort to get there.

2. Stay focused and practice. As stated in the previous tip, you only get better if you practice. So, if you never practice playing your instrument or putting together a song, you’ll never get famous and rich, and you might just end up shelving music as a whole. If you put in effort, you will get some kind of return out of the music, whether it’s making 6 figures on a record deal or playing in a band with your friends, and having fun, while making a little money playing gigs around town, there’s a place for everyone in the music world as long as they want it enough.

3. Take advice. There are plenty of musicians out there that are willing to help you by teaching what they know, so take all the help you can get and listen. If you think you already know everything then you won’t learn anything at all, and you’ll never improve. You can take this even further by actively seeking more information from sources like YouTube with thousands of videos on everything related to music.

4. Make what YOU want. If you’re serious about making music, you should be serious about making your music. Making cover songs to practice is great, but see what you can make from scratch to really push your creativity and skills. At first, you may hate what you’ve made, but if you keep making songs that you hate, you learn what you hate about them and you’ll learn how to make music you like instead of following someone else’s.

5. Turn it up to 11! You should put as much energy and passion as you can into your music, because that’s really what shows in the final product. If you love a song and work on it for months, people are more likely to enjoy that song than one that was rushed together in two hours because the song that took months had countless hours of effort thrown into it and you connect more with a song the longer you spend on it. This applies to everything in life, the energy you put in is usually equivalent to what people get out of it.