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Artistic License Music: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
So, you're watching this show where someone appears to be [[The Cast Showoff]], then you notice that their hands aren't matching the notes at all. Sometimes, to the point where [[They Just Didn't Care|they didn't even try]]. Or, perhaps someone is talking about music and it turns out it's just musical [[Techno Babble]].
Generally a musical trope of they [[Did Not Do the Research]]. To people not familiar with music, it doesn't bother, likely because it's not relevant to the plot, but to musicians it's obvious. It also mostly applies to instrumental music, because not everyone knows the technical skills and what it looks like to play an instrument, and instruments can be easily substituted in on the soundtrack because of the uniformity of sound. Guitars sound much more like each other than voices do.
* Type 1 is on the performance end, where an actor is playing a performer and is obviously NOT playing it in real life. Sometimes this is [[Lampshaded]] for comic effect, and thus [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]].
* Type 2 is on the writing or editing end, where the writer or editor is not familiar with music. This applies to incorrect terminology, obvious dubbing or computerized music. This is less common because usually higher-end productions come with a composer, sound editor, music supervisor, etc, and have decent sound libraries.
Note: Lip-synching does not apply here, because most people know how to lip synch, and music videos [[Milli Vanilli|almost always]] are the voices of the artist.
{{examples|Examples: }}
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* ''[[Drumline]]'': The printed music that comes out of a snare drum solo in the middle of the movie has sharps and flats, despite the fact that a snare drum has ''only one note'' (roughly, "bang").
* ''[[Mr. Holland's Opus]]'': It takes Mr. Holland 30 years to write a 3-minute orchestral composition, which the actual composer Michael Kamen probably wrote in two weeks.
** Of course, that is not the point of the movie, but to show that his real "Opus" was the impact on his students as a teacher, not his ability to compose. And to show the importance of music education. Even Kamen's foundation he founded after the film was about education, not composing music.
** Some musicians don't like the fact that Mr. Holland [[The Southpaw|conducts left-handed]], but they definitely do exist.
* ''[[The Parent Trap]]'': Hayley Mills is not moving her fingers when playing guitar Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Then on "Let's Get Together" her strumming does not match the music (in addition to not moving her fingers).
* ''[[Waiting for Guffman]]'': In the overture, someone decided to dub in MIDI instruments. This is either a gigantic [[In
* [[Johnny Cash]] referenced this trope when he first heard of the biopic ''[[Walk the Line]]''; he said that he hoped that whoever portrayed him knew how to hold a guitar correctly. The movie itself averts it, as both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (who portrayed Cash's wife, June Carter) worked for several months with producer T-Bone Burnett to learn how to sing and play instruments.
** However, the film does play it straight several other times, including one scene where Waylon Payne (as [[Jerry Lee Lewis]]) is backed by an electric bassist, but an upright bass is heard instead.
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== [[Music Videos]] ==
* Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love". Some people criticized the video because the "musicians" (portrayed by fashion models) were not correctly playing their guitars. [[VH-1]]'s "[[Pop Up Video]]" said that a musician was hired to teach the models basic guitar fingering techniques, but "gave up after about an hour and left".
* The music video for "If I Die Young" by The Band Perry has one of the band members playing an accordion. Even the least musically-inclined person can tell there's no accordion in the song (it's a ballad; why would they even use one?).
* Similarly, [[Scatman John]]'s "Scatman" video has a trumpeter, upright bassist and drummer in it, when all of the instruments are obviously synthesized.
* And in the video for The Bellamy Brothers' "Old Hippie (The Sequel)", one of them is strumming a resonator guitar in the video. This is doubly wrong; besides the complete lack of said instrument in the song, resonator guitars are usually played horizontally (like a lap steel guitar) or finger-picked, not strummed.
* [[Rebecca Black]]'s song (no, not ''[[Friday (song)|Friday]]'') ''My Moment''. At the beginning of the song you see Rebecca Black in a recording studio with a guitarist, a drummer and a bass player. Absolutely nowhere in the song can you hear a guitar or a bass.
* Richard Swift's "Knee-High Boogie Blues" video has a lot of closeup shots where it's obvious the drumsticks are not touching the drum head at any point, and the guitarist isn't touching the strings at all. It's so obvious that one can only assume that it was intentional.
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' has this to the level where [[They Just Didn't Care|they]] ''[[They Just Didn't Care|obviously]]'' [[They Just Didn't Care|just did not care]]. There is nothing even remotely accurate about the way any of the characters play any musical instrument. But then, they weren't trying - [[Rule of Funny]] is the single most important element of ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' shorts.
== Musicals ==
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