Musician in sound or in mind?

A few months ago, I had a world-view shattering realisation. I feel musical, and when I record my singing I'm generally pleased with the musical intentions, even if the actual voice quality is poor. I can use my singing as a useful starting point for developing an interpretation of a piece. I feel musical and can offer my students valuable insights into the works that they are studying. I feel musical and can appreciate the output of the very best recorder players quite satisfyingly. In other words, I wasn't unhappy with my level of musicality, beyond the usual caveats about wanting to be better, have deeper interpretations, know more about the background to studied works, etcetera, etcetera.

Then came my realisation. However good I am as musician, I'm a lousy recorder player. Somehow, I'd assumed that my singing, my feelings, my knowledge would mean that I'd be a good recorder player. And I left it at that. The cognitive dissonance on hearing my playing was always rationalised as something like I'll get better through practice. What constituted 'practice', though, was not really working.

I need to explain what I mean by calling myself a rotten player. A successful player is able to capture musical intentions in the sound produced. In other words, a listener is able to hear the various sound manipulations and recognise them as musical expression. An awful player might feel identically to the good player in every way; indeed, they might even be 'better' musicians. The difference lies in the sound. The bad sound simply does not contain those elements of expression required to convey the music. It's as simple as that. The process of becoming a better player is equally simple: to learn to control the instrument's expressive capabilities and deliver a requisite sound.

Music exists only in the mind. I had forgotten the essential equation for performers: the vehicle for mental music is the physical sound, change the physics to explain the meaning. I was imagining the music in my head, playing it blandly and never stopping to consider the actual sound.

Unforgivable.