The hardship and pleasure of a life in ethics, as in music, springs not from a commitment to the veneration of stability, refinement and consistency, as some political and aesthetic discourses often suggest. Rather, the productive tensions of ethical living arise from a restless interaction between constant motion and adaptability; both marks of critical thinking and being. This article is premised upon a simple distinction between "ethics" and "morals," in which ethics refers to questions of flourishing, and the struggle with one's own inconsistencies--and those of others. While morals refer to externally or internally "imposed constraints that govern how one should and should not treat other people." This distinction is important in supporting a greater emphasis on critical frameworks for ethics, but also in making the case that mistakenly equating the codification of behaviors found in "morals" with the embodied becoming found in "ethics," can quickly lead to misguided educative actions that may emphasize social inequity, skill over understanding, and the development of aesthetically narrow music doing rather than creative production. The author argues that an ethical commitment to an impactful education in and through music requires one to focus on "authorship" and not simply on music "doing," while evaluating the implications of "music production" rather than simply "music making." To be clear, the author's contention is that the role of ethics in education is not the institution of norms or practices, but rather the formation of "framings" as exemplary capacities of educated individuals. These framings are understood not simply as a capacity to appreciate and value, or to elucidate appropriate or normative ways of practicing. Rather, framings can be extrapolated as a constant pedagogical interaction with inconsistency, failure, dissent and choice. (Contains 16 notes.)