in Life, Music | July 28th, 2026 Leave a Comment

One of my favorite Bri­an Eno quotes, or rather one that became an Oblique Strat­e­gy, is “Hon­or Your Mis­take as a Hid­den Inten­tion.” (Or to be pedan­tic, the orig­i­nal ver­sion was “Hon­or Thy Error…”).

As a teenag­er grow­ing up and try­ing to make art (at that time music and comics) there was no advice more free­ing. It was the oppo­site of what I thought I knew: mis­takes were shame­ful, the sign of an ama­teur or of the lack of prac­tice. But the more art I made, the more I ref­er­enced Eno’s idea, and the more I read and lis­tened, the more I real­ized it wasn’t just Eno.

The Bea­t­les left in an alarm clock meant for the musi­cians on “A Day in the Life” and the sound of emp­ty booze bot­tles vibrat­ing on a speak­er was left in at the end of “Long Long Long” (along with tons more). The Beast­ie Boys left in a jump­ing nee­dle intend­ed for a smooth scratch on “The Sounds of Sci­ence.” Radio­head left in Jon­ny Greenwood’s warm-up chord that became essen­tial to “Creep.” (There’s a whole Red­dit thread devot­ed to these mis­takes if you choose to go down the rab­bit hole.)

But those exam­ples relate to the record­ing process of rock music. What about jazz? Sure­ly there are “wrong” notes when it comes to play­ing, espe­cial­ly if you’re not the soloist.