unmusically

How harshly and unmusically need not be described.

Two apprentices, one with head pillowed on the Records he had been examining, the other propped more comfortably against the wall, were vying unmusically.

Guitar strings scraped unmusically.

Unmusically a dial tone sawed.

The receptor hooted unmusically.

A loudspeaker blatted unmusically.

And yet it is also true that here, and elsewhere in the collection, the reader notes how unmusically, how uncomfortably, Gordimer can write, how backhandedly she can achieve her effects.

She began to sing, unmusically, in a badly pitched key: "The holly and the ivy, When they are both full-grown, Of all the trees..." Then she put her face in her hands and sobbed.

Though the instrument quickly fell out of favor after a very brief vogue, it still produced an attractively soulful sound that was a good fit with Terry's jaunty, slurry, note-bending manner... there is nothing unmusically sensational about anything that happens here."

Well, as the pianist Malcolm Bilson demonstrates, it is possible to play Mozart "unmusically," by following the score by rote and adding nothing to it, which turns out to be not so easy to do, at least for Mr. Bilson.

Mr Pinch was jogging along, full of pleasant thoughts and cheerful influences, when he saw, upon the path before him, going in the same direction with himself, a traveller on foot, who walked with a light quick step, and sang as he went--for certain in a very loud voice, but not unmusically.