Alistair Anderson is rightly acknowledged as a first-rate musician (concertina and northumbrian smallpipes). At one of his workshops (probably at all of his workshops, but I've only been to one) he said that the first step in learning to play is to start thinking of yourself as a musician. This has nothing to do with posing, or telling others that you're a musician, but with convincing yourself - getting into the right frame of mind. His advice was, when you're starting out, to at least pick up your instrument and hold it for a few minutes every day, even if you don't have time to play anything. Once you start thinking of yourself as a musician, you'll find you're playing whenever you can because that's what musicians do.

Once you're playing regularly, you'll start to get better - the only way to be a good musician is to be a bad musician, because if you're not playing, you're not getting better. But you'll never become a good musician until you start to think of yourself as a musician. First step!!!

Andrew