I have spent much of my life conducting bands, directing musicians and persuading large groups of people to come in together on the same note.

Which is why, every time I stand in a stadium for the national anthem, a tiny part of me winces.

God Save the King is a dignified, beautifully proportioned piece of music. It is harmonically simple, balanced and perfectly suited to ceremony. And yet it begins without an introduction.

In most ceremonial repertoire, we expect three things before collective singing begins:

• A clear tempo
• A harmonic orientation
• A shared breath

Our anthem offers none of these. A drum roll, perhaps. Then — commitment.

Historically this was not a problem. The anthem was sung in directed settings, often with a visible musical leader. But today we perform it in vast stadiums, with no conductor in sight and 70,000–80,000 people attempting to begin simultaneously.

At rugby internationals in particular, the effect can be painfully obvious. The crowd sings boldly — often at a different tempo from the band. The camera tracks slowly along the line of players. Some begin confidently. Others hesitate. A few are visibly unsure where the phrase actually starts.

On live television, it can make disciplined, elite athletes look momentarily awkward — not because they lack conviction, but because they have not been given a clear musical cue. We are asking them to perform a ceremonial act without giving them the basic tools musicians take for granted: tempo and breath.

The result is not stirring unity, but slight disarray.

The irony is that the solution would be extraordinarily simple.

Not a rewrite. Not a modernisation. Not an American-style fanfare.

Simply a brief instrumental preface — perhaps even just the final four bars of the anthem played more lightly — establishing tempo and allowing a unified breath before the first sung note.

The music itself would remain untouched. But the experience would change completely. The entry would feel intentional rather than guessed.

As musicians know, the first note of any piece does not truly begin on the downbeat. It begins in the silence before it — in the shared intake of breath.

Our national anthem deserves that moment.

It is one of the very few pieces of music we ask an entire nation to perform together. When we do, we should at least give it a proper beginning.

Simon Webb