By Ron Goldenberg
Musicians have an interesting habit. We hear every note we play wrong.
The audience usually doesn't. During a rehearsal, you might be thinking about the note you missed in bar 37, the entrance that was a little late, or that high note that didn't come out quite the way you planned. Meanwhile, the person sitting ten feet away is hearing something completely different. They're hearing the band.
That's one of the strange things about playing in an ensemble. We experience our own playing from a few inches away, so every little imperfection seems enormous. But everyone else hears fifty musicians creating music together. And the whole is usually much better than we think. This is particularly important in a community band. Most of us aren't trying to become professional musicians. We're trying to become better musicians while enjoying ourselves along the way. Those are very different goals.
Of course we should practise difficult passages. We should work on our tone, rhythm and intonation. We should listen to the conductor and try to improve. But perfection?
That's a pretty unreasonable standard for something we're supposed to be doing for fun.
Think about what actually happens during a WINHB rehearsal. Someone misses an entrance. Someone else plays a wrong note. A trumpet discovers an accidental approximately three measures later than everyone else. The conductor stops us. We laugh.
We try it again. And usually, it gets better. That's the process.
In fact, one of the pleasures of playing in a community band is realizing that you don't have to carry the music by yourself. Sometimes you have the melody. Sometimes you're providing harmony. Sometimes you're playing a few long notes that don't seem terribly important. Until they're missing. Every player contributes something to the sound.
So the next time you leave rehearsal thinking, I didn't play very well tonight, try asking yourself a different question: Did I contribute to the band tonight? Did I listen?
Did I try? Did I recover after making a mistake? Did I help create music with a room full of other people?
If the answer is yes, you probably had a much better rehearsal than you thought.
Our motto at the West Island New Horizons Band is “Your best is good enough.”
Maybe we should believe it a little more often.