The Perfect Wrong Note: Learning to Trust Your Musical Self (Amadeus)

This amazing book will change the way you approach music, if you let it. I was in choir as a kid and always enjoyed singing, but my childhood experiences with piano fell into the usual "I hate it" category. Piano lessons were boring. They didn't play music I liked. They were rote. I never felt proud to play anything on the piano. This book changed all that.Don't take my TL;DR as a reason not to buy this. Go ahead and read the whole thing! But the main concept is that all music comes from improvisation, not rote learning. Everything from Mozart to Abbey Road was produced by playing spontaneously and writing down or recording what was heard. This book is about developing that skill by learning to play "the perfect wrong note" and being ok with it -- so you that you can hear and develop the right notes when they come out.Getting over the fear of the wrong note and learning to let it flow is the key to becoming a real musician. More than a decade after reading this, I own a synthesizer, a 70's organ, a Maschine (drumpad style synth), and a sax synth and I love playing them all! I play in front of others. I compose and create spontaneously. I play wrong notes, sure, but lots of right ones, too, and so will you.

This book was a game changer for me in the best possible way. I was weeks away from a major recital, and was resigned to dropping a piece because I couldn't get it to come together - so I had nothing to lose. So I chose that piece for my experiment. I followed his (implausible) advice & in a few days I'd corrected problems I hadn't been able to correct in months of tedious work. And they stayed fixed! Practice time flies by, and I find myself feeling productive, refreshed, and pleasantly spent at the end of my practice time. My music is more musical, even if a wrong note occasionally slips in. (& when it does, it is not distressing, just useful information to direct my attention.) Down with the tyranny of the unforgivable wrong note! Up with connecting your inner self to your music! p.s. I waited a while to write this review - I wanted to see if the change was real. It has been. My teacher is strangely contradictory on the whole thing. He thinks it's bad advice that flies in the face of generations of collected wisdom. And he says I'm playing better than I ever have. We've both dropped the topic.

Not really being part of the culture to which the author is reacting, I found this book to be captivating, if a bit strident. The unfortunate tendency towards perfectionism taints a great deal more than music instruction. The expectations of deference and respect on the basis of position weaken bishops and U.S. presidents as well as maestros and music teachers. Still, the control freak element runs deep. As an adult beginner taking piano lessons, I just see it from a different perspective. Take humor in the strutting of the popinjay, no need to be alarmed by it.Also, the man either knows nothing about golf, or else cheats on his scorecard. I suspect the former rather than the latter. But, a recorded lousy golf swing is just a lousy golf swing, while one left off the scorecard is, well, a reflection of character.However, on his home ground, the practice room and the recital stage, the author is very strong. Texas Tech is lucky to have him. Go, Red Raiders!

For those of us who were "paper trained" as children, this book is a must. Although I am glad that the discipline of piano lessons served me well in my mental development, it would have been nice to have some of the freedom that this author grants to the reader. This book is part of my required reading for the Therapeutic Harp Training Program, and provides a release for those with a fear of improvisation. Yes, I can simplify the music. Yes, I can play that jig as a slow lullaby. I can skip notes or add them, not stopping to correct mistakes - and lose the guilt when not playing a piece "perfectly". The author has provided so many scenarios and examples. EVERYONE will be able to identify with, and learn from, more than one of them. This book is well written and a comfortable read.

Excellent! As a piano teacher and an enthusiastic amateur pianist, I appreciate the perspective of this book. Since most of the work of progressing in our art comes not in the lesson, sitting beside the teacher, but at home, alone on the bench, how we approach and think about our practice is all important. And perfectionism is the insidious enemy. Many teachers actively cultivate it in their students, and many never question it. But in The Perfect Wrong Note, Westney demonstrates just how corrosive and paralyzing it is, offering a surprising alternative viewpoint. This is one of the most readable and helpful of the many books on piano playing that line my bookshelf, and I plan to recommend it to my adult and teen students.

Such an essential guide - for fearlessness and fun in practising. I’m so glad my piano teacher recommended it to me, and I would like to recommend it to everyone who plays the piano, at any level at any age.

There are few books I'd be willing to pay for twice at full price, but this was one of them. Having played the piano and other instruments virtually my whole life and having never overcome stagefright, this book was a godsend, and I now own it in both paperback and the Kindle edition.I took lessons when I was young, but eventually quit so that I wouldn't have to perform at recitals anymore. As an adult, I returned to study with an excellent piano teacher in my area who recommended this book to me. I can't stress enough how liberating it is to give up the idea of perfection--stilted--controlled playing for this new idea of interpreting wrong notes as new information, fodder for the body as it learns to move and navigate in its musical space.The reason I wanted it in both editions--paper and Kindle--is because I can't refer back to it enough. When you've spent years incorporating the wrong idea into your practice, it takes years to undo it. I like to have this book available to me anytime the mood strikes or time permits me to review.

When obviously marked up the book with marker, so it was not a new book

As an adult violin learner, this book was a very lovely read. It spoke to me about confidence, ability and stage fright. Really nicely written and just what I needed to read. My tutor recommended it to me and I'm very glad he did.

Tem uma linha bastante interessante, mais para o lado psicológico e humano. Achei que as dicas dadas são úteis para o aprendizado de música em geral, não apenas o piano.

I wish I had this book 20 years ago. I hated piano in the end, because it was uninspiring and I recently started up again. I lacked a lot of skills I thought were my fault, but this book took the words right out of my mouth. Methodology is very important when you teach a student. Memorizing notes is not enough. I highly recommend this book, especially for music teachers who are stuck in the traditional way of teaching. Students need to learn from mistakes, instead of being told that they are wrong all the time.

Very educational and eye-opening to any amateur to professional musician!

A long time ago (maybe 30 years ago) I read the "Inner Game of Golf" where I was introduced to the concepts of letting your non egotistical self learn from awareness how to control your body. It worked then for me. I came across this book after someone on a piano forum said they had met the author at a seminar. The brief outline reminded me of the "inner Game of Golf" and so I thought I would buy it and read it.The Inner Game of GolfThe first few chapters really explained the concept of letting your body learn for itself in the same manner as the "inner Game" series - but the breakthrough for me was more about the more advanced concept that making a mistake is a great opportunity for the body to learn (provided you remain aware whilst you are making the mistake). Therefore practice is about trying to play the piece as you would in a performance, but not striving for perfection but striving for the opportunity to discover why your aren't perfect.This slight change in emphasis has radically changed my practice and so far (after only a week or so) seems to be really paying off. Instead of practicing a difficult section (of a few notes to a couple of bars) with the intention of trying to play it perfectly, I am now trying to practice it to discover what my fingers are doing and what is causing them to not play it how I want it to sound. And it appears that my body is responding by changing so it makes less mistakes. What is more I am finding I can even start to play those difficult sections whilst looking at the music, or even with my eyes closed whereas before I had to look at the keys and my hands. And somehow the opportunity to do this with a small section is making practicing much more enjoyable.The latter half of the book (apart from Chapter 10 - aimed at people like me Adult Amateurs) seems to be more aimed at how teachers can get more from their students, so not as overall as important to me as the beginning although there are some useful tips. I particularly liked the authors experience of learning from Eloise Ristad (author of "A Soprano On Her Head" - another good read, but not as transformative as this book A Soprano on Her Head: Right-side-up Reflections on Life and Other Performances) and how she showed him to realise how to play Bach differently by dropping his (incorrect) preconceptions about it.