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Comment by _raoulcousins | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: what does it mean that perfect accuracy is a bad thing? I'm not a pianist and I'm not a professional, but I'm an amateur oboist (20 years in student/amateur orchestras). I think of technical accuracy as necessary but not sufficient for playing music. When I really have a piece down technically I can focus 100% on musicality, but I want the technical parts down solid.

Of course as I'm practicing, I am deliberate at working on both the technique and playing expressively. If I'm not deliberate about it, it's too easy to just focus on nailing the technique - it's a lot easier than the musicality.

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For a simple example, any music that “grooves” (makes you want to tap your feet) tends to not be perfectly sub-divided into 4 beats. Different players in the same band may be intentionally (and/or subconsciously) hitting their notes on different parts of the beat to increase this effect. In this type of scenario there really isn’t any substitution for practice and “feel”, a metronome would never get you there.

In terms of piano, GP may have been referring to rubato, or holding notes for longer/shorter than notated for artistic effect.

Pop and jazz have "the pocket", which is where the groove clicks into maximum effectiveness.

Classical has phrasing.

IMO it's the same phenomenon. It's one of the most effective ways to add expression, and it's mostly taught aurally. There's very little in books for beginners about it.

If you're taught to play metronomically, you may never understand why it matters. Someone who is naturally musical will feel it without being told about it, but may still struggle to bring it out of their playing.

I see. I guess it was just me misinterpreting "perfect". To me it's obviously not perfect to play like a robot.

Agree, "perfect accuracy" was a bad choice of words. When learning a new song it's best to "never play a wrong note" – to make sure you play each note with 100% accuracy, no matter how long it takes you. This trains your muscle memory much more efficiently than playing less than perfect and undoing the muscle-memory-learned mistakes as you go along.

It’s called “swing”, right?

In some contexts, yes.

Roger Linn on groove: https://www.attackmagazine.com/features/interview/roger-linn...

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