Basic Trope: A character whose musical skills are so bad they hurt.
- Straight: George tries to play the clarinet, but all sounds he makes from it are ear-piercing squeaks which make everyone in the room go dizzy.
- Exaggerated:
- George plucks the string of a guitar, and windows immediately shatter.
- Even an Eldritch Abomination can't stand against George playing clarinet.
- Every time George plays a single note from any instrument, everyone in the room goes deaf, goes insane or dies.
- Downplayed: George can play only simple tunes. Whenever he tries to perform something complicated, the results are disastrous.
- Justified:
- George is tone-deaf and is unable to notice this.
- George is completely deaf, and tries to find himself in something unusual for deaf people.
- George has no experience with a clarinet.
- George had something traumatic in the past involving the clarinet, so a mental block occurs everytime he tries to play this instrument.
- George is so bad-tempered nobody dares criticize him.
- George plays instruments as a form of physical therapy, trying to regain basic movement of his fingers.
- Inverted:
- George is a virtuoso and plays Awesome Music.
- George can play Magic Music from any instrument or even non-instruments.
- Subverted:
- George the pianist takes the clarinet and tries to play a tune, emitting instead only squeaks. "Yes, this is definitely not my instrument" he says and proceed to play the piano normally.
- It was merely coincidence that the already cracked window failed completely at that moment.
- With a clarinet that mangled it's a miracle George could get any sound out of it at all.
- The clarinet is just badly out of tune and not properly maintained. Once it is properly tuned, cleaned and the reed replaced, the clarinet plays just fine.
- Double Subverted:
- Though George is presented as a pianist, when he tries to play the piano, it seems normally first... when he plays the simple piece. Then the piece gets more complicated, and George's playing suddenly turns into a dreadful mess of sounds.
- Howard, a mediocre player, could still play that clarinet to great effect.
- The clarinet plays just fine when played by someone else. George still can't coax anything resembling music from it.
- Parodied: George presses down a piano key, and everything explodes.
- Zig Zagged:
- George tries various instruments throughout the story. He can play some of them, but listening to him playing others is just painful.
- George excels at playing instruments but is terrible at singing (or vice-versa).
- Averted: No character in the series plays musical instruments this bad.
- Enforced: The story is about a town where everyone plays musical instruments, and George is a main character that should be presented as a complete loser.
- Lampshaded: "It's not possible for a clarinet sound to break glass, is it?"
- Invoked:
- "What? It was not too bad, I've been training, really!"
- George is terrible on purpose because he's a jerkass who enjoys making others suffer.
- Exploited:
- A guerilla war is happening. George's friends find a clarinet somehow and give it to him, then use him as a living sonic weapon.
- George plays terribly on purpose to torture a captured criminal until he reveals the location of his base.
- Defied: George takes lessons to improve his skill.
- Discussed: "Even I could learn to play the clarinet better! And I don't even know how to play it!"
- Conversed: "Yesterday you played just like him."
- Implied: "No, George, we can't put you in a band - we don't need victims!"
- Deconstructed:
- George really wants to become a proficient player, but his utter lack of skill repels people, so he gives up on clarinet.
- George injures himself from playing the clarinet with poor technique.
- Reconstructed:
- Over time, George discovers Harsh Noise music genre, starts making grating sounds for his amusement and even performs in obscure clubs.
- George practices a lot. He eventually gets pretty decent at it, to everyone's dismay.
- Played For Laughs:
- George is blissfully unaware of how bad he is, and believes the people next to him that are whimpering due to his horrible skill (or lack thereof) are dancing.
- George's horrible music is over-the-top humorous, hilarious and funny to the point that his music becomes an In-Universe meme and also a Memetic Molester at some point.
- Played For Drama:
- George plays his clarinet to his baby nephew to help him sleep. Said baby nephew ends up permanently deafened from all the noise, starting a chain of disasters and grudges that leads to the destruction of George's family.
- George plays loud shrieking tunes to harass a captive audience, blocking his ears making it clear that he knows he is being awful.
- Played For Horror:
- George's horrible music is literally horrible: it's a Brown Note.
- George is a demon and his awful music is part of his demonic toolkit.
- George's awful music is used as a torture device, leading to scenes of people bleeding from all orifices, convulsing and screaming in agony, and dying.
- George's awful music (and complete inability to see otherwise) leads to him being murdered.
- Plotted A Good Waste: George is an Anti-Role Model; don't ignore music that depict you for hatred.
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