Me and two friends of mine auditioned for the school band about a year ago. Two of us auditioned as guitarists while the other auditioned as a bassist. In the end we all passed, we were thinking 'happy days!' and I thought we'd get the musical freedom of expression. I was wrong.

We were forced to do X-Factor type stuff, which is what the singers were into. We weren't a band. It's as if we were just playing for someone else. We even tried to compromise by suggesting the Beatles or something (as they are well known) but our manager wasn't having any of it and the singers kept moaning.

I didn't feel like a guitarist at all. We all had four chord to play throughout the whole song, we couldn't even be creative with the instruments. It was all 'do what your told to'.

Rehearsals became tedious as it was all very repetitive.

When it came to the performance it was pretty bad. I was pretty miserable about it all, as I got fed up with playing the same chords for the past three months. My timing and rhythm was out completely. Thank goodness the other (better) guitarist was there. It was pretty embarrassing!

Is this what it's really like? Is the music industry really full of greedy, fascist egoists?