Trying to have some personality

I think personality is more important than technical ability. A lot of times it takes a lot of technical ability to truly express your inner personality, but I just find myself more drawn to the kind of art where the personality transfixes me. Sometimes an aspect of that personality can be really sloppy, or can be something that borders on a train wreck but not quite. Tom Waits just can’t be compared to Pavarotti, but you know what? They both have a magnetic personality. Or take Madonna: she has fully admitted that she’s not the best singer. Adele has both personality and technical skill, but I think people mostly just care about her personality. I can think of some bands that just suck, but they are all technical virtuosos. I won’t name them here. :) Or take the entire hard core movement. It was about energy, it was about substance, it was about the scene. Not about hot guitar riffs.

Don’t get me wrong–I think you have to have technical skill of some kind in order to express what’s in your soul, and anyone can be technical with enough practice. So there’s some balance here. It’s a skill to be able to express yourself properly. And that is above and beyond learning to play a bunch of fast notes in a row.

I’ve played in sessions where I’ve felt my soul getting crushed because I felt like I was under the microscope, and it made me self-conscious. And I’ve seen it happen to others. They focus so much on playing notes perfectly, and then the life gets sucked out of the finished recording.

I was just listening to some rough mixes from Bucharest Drinking Team. We recorded a couple songs completely live at Vera Project. No individual tracking, and not one instrument at a time. We just went in for a few hours and recorded live whatever happened. The Drinkies are the kind of band where the live experience is so much of what they do, so I  couldn’t imagine recording any other way. There were some sour notes. I overplayed on the high hat. Whatever. The personality is shining through, and I’m completely happy about that. So I hope I’m making some progress with that, finally. It wasn’t until I went to get some drum lessons that I truly appreciated this.

So what’s important to you? Personality? Something else?