I don't like the idea of musical notes being a different rendering of sound. Everyone plays a piece differently. Classical music is a great example of that.

I like the analogy of notes on a page being akin to source code and the different players akin to different compilers. Every "standard compliant" player (one that knows all the constructs) produces the same result (the song/program), they just do it differently from each other (different playing styles/different assembly). Newbies just aren't as "standard compliant" because they ignore certain constructs they don't understand.