Technique represents a major portion of music making and so plays a significant role for fluent and accurate playing. This essay is about practice methods to achieve technical accuracy through finger placements alongside note reading. The oft-used expression, ‘that is a wrong note’, lacks the extension of remedial information and is more representative of a nominalist term rather than a concept. Perhaps it would be more facilitative for all concerned if the origin of the error was included in the identification. Hence the term, ‘that is an incorrect finger placement’, contains both identification and remedy.

Confidence in finger placements is the bottom line for fluent and accurate technique and avoids the dreaded ‘wrong note’ syndrome. Most ‘wrong notes’ are made not written by composers. Technical accuracy is the benchmark for competent and professional music making and very often attributed to long hours of practice on the instrument of choice. This assertion may not be the case under some circumstances, and depends on the methodology used during practice rather than the duration of time.

Ideally there needs to be a verifiable methodology in place prior to practice sessions being undertaken. For verifiability, the methodology needs the support of the facticity of the matter, that is, accurate finger placements equal correct notes. Instruments designed for the playing of music are demonstrators and have no other role to fill. Each music instrument fills the role of demonstrating the messages it receives from the player.

These messages determine the where and when of the finger placements producing the notes. In the general sense so called wrong notes are in fact incorrect messages to the instrument, and result in errors. Music instruments are not learning devices but demonstrators of the messages sent to them, and if you send incorrect messages, the instrument will dutifully reproduce those messages.

Perhaps the difference between the expression ‘wrong note’ and ‘incorrect finger placement’ is too fine a line. The reading of the notes maybe all that is needed, however, the absence of conceptual information is not facilitative. If the identification is supplied as a means of correction for a player, then ‘wrong note’ does not contain that feature.

The term ‘finger placement’ encapsulates the methodology and the note, whilst ‘incorrect’ suggests the remedy for those players ready for accuracy and competence in practice and performance.