Misconceptions I Have Heard About Music And Musicians

I am a musician only in so much as I play music.  I don't make a living playing music and never will.  I am not a proper musician in that I don't know music theory, don't play anything with the right technique, cannot read music, and my skills are rudimentary.  In many ways I am a musician in so much as I do a good job faking it.  On the other hand I have faked it pretty well on a selection of hand drums, a drum kit, the guitar, and the mandolin, and singing.  To those who are not musicians I am a musician.  To those who are musicians I am not.

Anyway, in my years faking the ability to play music I have come across a number of misconceptions about playing music from those who don't.  Here they are.

Music is simply a talent.  It isn't.  The talent necessary to play music consists of being able to recognize pitch in so much as you can tell when two notes are the same (if you can sing a nursery rhyme with someone you have this ability), enough rhythm to clap your hands with someone else, and the dexterity of someone who can type.  Now, there are people who are more talented than others.  Some people have a keener sense of pitch, sometimes as much as perfect pitch (hearing a note and being able to tell you what it is without a comparison) and other people people are more dextrous.  Being able to play music is mostly about the application of effort.  Practice, practice, practice.  Playing until your fingers are in agony, day after day after day.  Those who are genius musicians have practiced for thousands of hours and therefore have the technical skills to put emotion into their music.

If you can play one song you can play any song.  This is very, very far from true.  The most knowledgeable musician in the world can probably play just a few hundred songs out of millions.  I have played an Irish folk song and been immediately asked to play a modern pop song that I would recognize if I heard it.  This is far, far from reality.  It takes work and time to learn songs, they don't magically spring into your head.  I have heard brilliant musicians been asked to play a song, and they will play a few notes in the melody and then have to go back and think of what a note will be, make some guesses, and find it by trial and error.

If you can play music you can "jam".  Some people can do this, but only within relatively small genres, and they must know theory, have a great sense of pitch, and be very familiar with the style.  I have seen great musicians in Cajun and Irish music (music from the same roots) trying to play together and being largely baffled.  A slip jig is actually impossible music that some people can play.  If you suggest to a musician that they just go jam, when they say, "no" the chances are that they are not being humble, they simply can't do it.  The best example I have of this was a Boston Pops concert in which three woman violinists from different genres (classical, irish folk, and jazz) got together to play a concert.  These are astonishing musicians and yet they had to practice together in order not to sound bad because they couldn't find "the three".  This simply means that the different genres have very slight differences in when a note is played in a rhythm.

Music is impossibly complex.  Actually music is a combination of relatively simple concepts cobbled together in an organic way.  The basis of music is that a sound is made up of a combination of vibrations.  The next note or semi-tone or whatever is simply a different sound that matches a number of these vibrations but not all of them.  The keys on a piano and the frets on a guitar are just these pleasing combinations set out in order.  The gap between notes is where these vibrations don't match up.  A key is simply a collection of notes that evokes a particular emotion, basically leaving out notes that don't fit that feeling.  A scale is simply that collection starting in different places.  Rhythm is simply time divided into sections with an emphasis on certain times.
So, a waltz in A- is a collection of notes that fit a mood (called the minor key), starting with an A note, using the notes in the minor scale, divided up into standard sections of time where you emphasize the third note.  If you go A D E A D E you are playing a waltz in A-.  More complicated music is simply complications in time and the variety of notes used.

Music has been the same forever.  Actually music is constantly evolving.  If you look at the notes on a piano some of them are white and some of them are black.  The reason for this is that several hundred years ago songs were only played on those white notes and someone discovered the black ones.  The standardized notation for music was made up by a monk, and is not intuitive because "modern" music has discovered these notes (so that in some keys the same line is a different note), some guy made up the squiggles for different length of notes, and the treble clef is just insanely weird.  The reason this hasn't been fixed is simply cultural inertia.

Musicians are lazy.  They may be lazy in many areas of life but you cannot be lazy and be able to play music well, it just isn't possible.  On average musicians are the lowest paid profession per hour in the USA.  This is because while they might make hundreds of dollars in an hour or two, they spent hundreds of hours being able to play that hour or two.  It takes consistent, self-motivated hard work to be able to play music at any level.  Those stoned guys up on stage drinking beer in ripped jeans having a good time worked their asses off to be able to do that.  Being able to play that first three chord song on the guitar is going to take hours of practice, pain in your fingers, and lots and lots of swearing.

If you can play one instrument you can play any instrument.  No, you can't.  Put a concert violinist in behind a drum kit for the first time and they will have a good idea of what should happen, but they will be lost trying to make it happen.  A violin takes two arms and dexterity in the fingers of your left hand in a tiny space.  A drum kit requires all four limbs, no finger dexterity, all in a large area.  Even with stringed instruments there can be problems.  A mandolin has the notes on the strings upside down compared to a guitar.  The banjo is completely different.  If someone can play different instruments, they learned to play them largely independently.