Style and creativity over perfection

I LOVE listening to and watching podcasts and videos about music and the processes behind some of the greatest music made. I’ve watched a lot of the “What Makes This Song Great?” series on Rick Beato’s YouTube channel. I listened from the beginning to Song Exploder and more recently Strong Songs. My latest obsession though is One Song. There are two hosts and one of them has stems from hundreds of hits over the decades that they use to break down songs and put them into context. If you don’t know, stems are the individual parts of a song in isolation. So you can hear the vocals only, the guitar only, the bass only, the drums only.

On a recent episode of One Song where they’re discussing Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze, one of the hosts asks the other (because he’s not a guitar player), “is that a hard part to play”? I’ve seen comments on many posts that are similar and that are even critical because it’s not something hard to play. Tons of iconic musical parts are not technically hard to play. When I started learning guitar around 30 years ago I was learning parts from songs I loved. These were obviously not hard to play, because I didn’t know how to play but I learned them quickly.

What makes something memorable and popular often has nothing to do with technical ability. It’s a result of creativity, feeling, expression. Something might be easy to learn and play but that’s only because someone was creative enough to put that into the world.

As a videographer/filmmaker it’s easy to get lost in the gear and technical ability world. If only I had a better camera. If only I had this piece of gear. If only I’d gone to film school. When I think of Outsiderness, it’s not a film I’m proud of because of how “cinematic” it is or because the production value is high. It’s not. It was shot mostly on relatively inexpensive gear with little intention to lighting. What I’m proud of is that it conveys the message I wanted to convey; it evokes the feelings I wanted it to. Rather than focusing on the technical aspects, my decisions were based more on how I wanted the viewer to experience it. I wanted it to feel raw and imperfect. In other words, I wanted it to feel real.

When it comes to music, I often prefer live versions of songs to studio versions. Studio recordings are mostly too perfect. The musicians have the opportunity to do retakes and overdubs, then there’s the mixing and mastering to really polish things up and make “perfect.” Live performances are full of imperfections — pitchy singing, flubbed guitar parts, changing tempos — you know, the things that make us all human. And there’s an energy in live performances that can’t be replicated in a studio. Energy flows from crowds to the stage and it’s amplified back by the bands.

This is something I keep reminding myself of whenever I get down on myself for not making something perfect. And it’s something I actually look for when I’m taking in art. Those human qualities, the imperfections, that’s what connects me. Now that I think about it, this is what AI will never accomplish, because it’s not human. (Hey, I think I just made myself feel better about all this AI stuff.)

I’ll leave you with this live performance of Living Colour playing their 80s hit “Cult of Personality” on Jimmy Kimmel. Besides the poignant timing of this, I just love the energy of it. Also, growing up listening to 80s metal and rock, it really meant a lot to me to see their skin on TV.