Is It Really A Wrong Note If I Didn’t Notice?

When I perform a piece of music on my instrument, sometimes people tell me that I have played a wrong note. It is true. It happens to the best of us. I should know.

And it is true that sometimes I do not in fact play the “correct” note, whatever that may mean. Just because it is written down, doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been something else written down, does it?

But there are yet other times when someone tells me I played a wrong note and I did not even realise any notes had been played wrong by me. It’s as if these people had not been listening to what I was doing at all, but rather listening to some other sort of thing inside their heads, like a CD, or emotions.

And I ask you this: how wrong can it be if I didn’t notice it? Surely a wrong note should stand out?

After all, I am the artist, I am the one sculpting beauty with air, I am the one sublimating raw human experience into rarefied and crystalline artistic forms bequeathed to us by the greatest geniuses of human history. I think if there were any wrong notes, I’d be the first to know, seeing as they are happening nearest to me.

And anyway, what is a wrong note? If art is about self-expression, and I am self-expressing wrong notes, doesn’t that mean they are the right notes?

It is a tough concept for the non-performer to understand, to be fair. Out in the regular world where hands and mouths are just used for food and banking, there’s not a clear delineation between right and wrong, just between various types of fingers. It must seem like an abstract idea to say that these body parts are capable of doing something audibly wrong; first you have to create a big artificial system so that you can play a game where you judge which bit of the system is different to which other bit, based on some rules you made up. What a lot of effort! Much better to just eat a rissole.

I think we can all agree that when I play notes, I’m really playing my notes. And that is all that counts.

One thought on “Is It Really A Wrong Note If I Didn’t Notice?

  • September 23, 2024 at 11:53 am
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    I would like to know why anyone would point out that you played a wrong note. I can understand your teacher doing it, if you still have one, but why would any member of the public feel obligated to point out what they view as your mistake? To show how knowledgeable they are? How superior they are? In my mind, it only shows that they aren’t listening for the art, only for mistakes. The great artists of yore never worried about wrong notes, only about wrong phrasing. Callas had her off nights but no one cared because she was such a great artist. Apparently art isn’t important anymore. Only notes. It’s sad.

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