Performances and Instruments with "Character"

Fortunately, we now live in times where the strict separation between "entertainment music" and "art music" is slowly but surely dissolving. 

For me, it is fascinating to observe how that dissolving separation influences music itself and film or media music is a great indicator for this as it very often stands more or less exactly in the area where the (former(?)) border between the two worlds was. And while we make a lot of progress in this field (for instance, many music universities for students of "classical" instruments nowadays offer courses for (Jazz) improvisation as part of the general curriculum) there quite often still happens the occasional rub between these schools of thought.

One of these rubs is the whole field of "Performances with Character". Pop music longs for such performances and it might probably not be presumptious to say that many artists who work in this field would prioritize authenticity and character over technical perfection. Very often, we can say that this "special vocal performance" of singer x or that "specific sound" of player y has a lot to do with lack of "academic" technical proficiency. This is by no means meant in a negative way. Artists who have a more self taught upbringing might develop strategies and work principles that are relatively far away from the academic standard and not considered technically perfect. 

All this in its own has worked perfectly fine for the "entertainment music" for decades. Musicians who couldn't read any music and were extremely limited in their ability to sing or play had huge success based on their authenticy and way to perform.

The rub however happens, when we try to transport this approach into the academically trained music world. Musicians from this world train their whole life to iron out any imperfections in their playing or singing and develop technical skills to perfectly control their instrument. And they rightfully do so. If you want to be accepted in an orchestra or opera house, technical perfection is one of the if not THE most important reason to hire or not hire somebody in this world.

Media composers however quite often have a very special career path, many are self taught or have a pop music history. With the fetishization of sound of the recent decades in media music, the desire for characteristic performances or sounds in media music has increased excessively. Just looking at how many "old and trashy" pianos are sampled and recorded nowadays because they have this special characteristic sound that is more suitable than a perfectly tuned and technically impeccable Steinway D proves that point.

As long as this desire only extends to using odd instruments, this is not much of a problem but it will become one if it involves players or singers who are unfamiliar with this whole concept.

From my own experience, I remember several instances where I worked with singers. In one instance, I had booked a great classical choir, but for one cue wanted a "characteristic" sound, so I asked them to basically sing with a voice that is close to "breaking", like that breathy sound you know from characteristic pop singers. Now all of these singers trained their whole life to NOT sing like this. In the academic world, it is considered bad technique and you should do everything to get rid of such a singing style. Now with me asking for exactly the thing they have practiced for years to avoid was quite problematic. While some of them could make the switch, others were simply not able to rewire their brain to let go of the classical approach. So eventually I ended up with a relatively unsatisfying performance.

Similar things happen with strings. That fragile, almost breaking sound that we know from "tenseful string notes" and that many define as "character" is in fact a "badly executed" version and for many string players (especially from older generations), it is very tricky to create this sound due to all these mental barriers.

There are by now many specialized solo musicians who developed a more "characteristic" sound on classical instruments, who interstingly very often come from the more avantgarde music spectrum with all its special playing techniques, but as soon as you want a larger ensemble of traditional instruments to dive into this "performance mode", you are very often destined for disaster or at least dissappointment.

Of course this all happens in their heads but decades of training, teaching them to avoid certain things and suddenly someone coming along asking for exactly these "wrong things" can sometimes just be too much for them to ask for.

In a way, this border between entertainment and art music that I mentioned at the beginning still exists in their heads and letting go of the technical perfectionism in favor of a more characteristic performance feels to them like giving up their musical professionalism which of course is totally understandable from their point of view.

I have successfully managed in solo sessions to create a relaxed enough atmosphere for a pro musician to let go of this thought in several instances but until now failed to achieve that with an ensemble.

Having said that, it is essential to distinguish between the moments when it is needed to have a "character performance" and the moments where it is just gimmicky and a "proper" performance would be the better solution.

Still, I'm looking forward to how these worlds will hopefully merge more into another in the future and hope that at one point, musicians will be able to freely switch between different playing attitudes without being locked up in their head about the unneccesary internal debate about what is professional and what isn't.