Developing Your Unique Sound (Newsletter 04)

I hope you're doing well from wherever you are in the world.

A big issue I've found for myself and people I've talked to is the development of a unique “sound”. One that separates our music and art from the rest.

I've been thinking a lot about creativity and developing my own unique sound, and wanted to share my thoughts.

In this newsletter, I’m talking to people with a creative desire to be artists.

If you want to learn music production to imitate others and create soundalikes, you can do that. I’ve had many jobs where the instruction was to rip off a popular song for a radio ad or television commercial).

To me, that’s deeply unfulfilling—it actually works against my sensibilities as an artist.

To you, it may be a career path worth pursuing and this newsletter may still benefit you. Just know that, in this newsletter (and tomorrow's), I won’t be writing to you and your goals.

For everyone who wants to reach authentic artistic expression of their unique identity through their music, let’s dive in.

You Are Creative

Let's get this straight right off the bat. You are creative. We are all creative. It's in our nature as human beings. It's what we all do.

We take resources, whether physical or mental, and repurpose them creatively to reach individual and collective goals.

If you don't believe me, just look around:

• The computer or phone you're reading this from was created.
• The house or apartment you live in was created.
• The tools you used to cook your last meal were created.
• The society you live in, with all its norms, was created.
• The favourite album you listen to was created.
• The sports you love to play and watch were created.
• The businesses that make your life easier were created.

I could go on. In each of these examples, there was (and continues to be) a collection of ideas put into action to create a result.

Any idea that you’re not creative is simply a story you’ve been told, either by society or by yourself.

Creativity is the default.

The story you tell yourself is either an invitation to investigate that creativity or an obstacle to tapping into the infinite. The good thing about it is that you can train your mind and you can train your creativity.

You Are The Only You

Yes, it's corny… but it's an absolute truth.

You have your own unique (and evolving) experiences, perspectives, tastes, interests, knowledge and skills. These are the cornerstones of your unique voice as an individual.

Your unique sound comes at the intersection of these aspects. Lean into these as much as possible and reap the rewards.

Music is subjective.

You and I can listen to the same exact music, and depending on our tastes, mood, life experience, and even hearing health, we will interpret the music in completely different ways.

Even with the exact same influences, what resonates with me and serves my musical inspiration will be different from what resonates with you and serves your music inspiration.

This simple truth should give you all the confidence you need to develop a truly unique style and sound.

A Critical Note

Unique doesn’t mean unrefined. Learn the fundamentals before getting “creative”.

In the beginning, as you're learning the rules, I highly encourage you to imitate your influences.

Learn the rules by focusing your efforts on a strong vision of an inspiring goal. Chances are high you'll fail miserably at recreating your favourite music and, in the process, make something new and learn a tremendous amount along the way.

Imitate, then innovate.

When I was first starting out, my sound was unique by the fact that it was unbalanced, overly compressed, distorted and just plain terrible. Sure, it was “unique” but it was still trash.

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.” – Ira Glass

Personally, I got into music production after having played in hardcore bands in high school. The fundamentals I skipped were in the mixing aspect.

I put together the Mixing With Series as a way to help those who were once in my position, not knowing where to start with mixing and mixing tools.

I'll drive home my point that the fundamentals are absolutely essential.

We must learn the rules of the game before we can develop into a unique player. We must learn the basics before we can truly reach our creative potential.

• A unique painter must first understand colour theory, brushwork, composition and lighting.
• A unique professional hockey player must first master skating, stickhandling, teamwork and the mechanics of the game.
• A unique public speaker must first understand the language, voice projection, cadence and persuasion.

Without the foundation, we cannot build something beautiful and unique.

Develop your fundamental knowledge, then more advanced skills, and go deep into your genuine interests. That’s how you create “original” art.

Creativity = Connecting The Dots = Learning

Learning = connecting the dots.

Creativity = connecting the dots.

Therefore, learning = creativity.

Learning means exploring the unknown, gaining experience, and making new connections between what you currently understand and don't currently understand.

In other words, it's about bridging the gap between the known and unknown.

This is where the magic happens.

“Any time you know how it is, your world just got a lot smaller” – Rick Rubin

Just as humans are naturally creative, we're also designed to learn. Our entire relationship with reality is tied to the input and output of information. If that process stops, we stop.

Everything is information. Learning is a way of focusing on and retaining information. Creativity comes from using that information in a unique way.

Music is deep. There's always something to study and learn. Here are some broad categories to consider and make connections between:

• Music theory
• Music performance
• Recording
• Music production
• Sound Design
• Mixing
• Mastering
• Marketing

How many connections can you make between these categories? What patterns do you recognize? How about the many subtopics and infinite tangential topics within each of these categories?

Pro tip: take notes.

The brain is great at having ideas, but not so great at holding ideas. Writing things down gives us a catalog of creative ideas to reference when it comes time to create.

I owe so much to the simple habit of writing (but that's a topic for another newsletter). In the context of developing your unique sound, consider taking the following notes:

• Take note of any interesting effect chains or synth patches you create. Don't only save the settings as templates. Write them down for future reference!
• Write down creative ideas to test in your music as they come to mind—being able to put your musical ideas into words will add another layer of connection.
• Listen to you favourite records and take note of what you like. Take note of what makes the record unique (according to your current catalogue of musical knowledge).
• Continue growing a “living list of ideas”. Borrow these ideas from your favourite artists for inspiration in creating your own sound.

The Idea Of Stealing Like An Artist

“Good artists copy, great artists steal” – Pablo Picasso

Stealing is wrong. DO NOT PLAGIARIZE.

Do, however, use others work as inspiration for your own. It takes a lot of pressure off from trying to be 100% original (hint: that's an impossible task).

We are all products of the information we take in.

Our minds act as filters as information reaches our input. We filter signal signal (what we're consciously aware of and subconsciously programmed to make sense of) from the noise (all the information we're exposed to within the universe).

By the way, that's pretty much the law of attraction in a nutshell—focus on what you want and your mind will find that “signal” in the “noise”.

Our minds also filter information on the way out. This can be good or bad, but it's what gives us our unique voice.

We take all the influences we have, internalize their sound and what we like, and output musical ideas of our own.

But this doesn't only have to come from musical artists. Consider your favourite artists in general and make connections from there, too.

Painters, graphic designers, lecturers, writers, videographers, photographers: these artists can all inspire your sound if you can connect the dots of what they're doing to what you're doing.

Focus On Authenticity, Not Popularity

Why are you making music? To appease algorithms? To try and make a quick buck? To impress people you think will make you famous?

Or to truly express yourself though the powerful art of music?

Deprogram from the endless stream of inauthenticity. Focus on your true artistic expression.

Write for you and not for others.

We’re living in an interesting age with the internet:

On one hand, there’s a tremendous amount of music being uploaded to the internet every day (and now AI is producing music).

A lot of that is rehashed, uninspired, cookie-cutter non-sense. Regardless, by virtue of supply, it makes it more difficult to get heard.

On the other hand, you have the control to build an audience on your own terms. You no longer need a label’s distribution, A&R or financing. Nor do you need a school’s stamp of approval.

You can distribute your music yourself via DistroKid (this is my discount code if you're interested in signing up).

You can develop youself along the way. Music technology has never been more accessible, and you can learn how to do it for close to free online.

No matter how “unpopular”, “niche” or “out there” your music is, there are listeners out there waiting to hear your unique style. In fact, people are craving something new in a sea of copies.

You can be yourself, and that self can be successful.

It takes a lot of work, but it’s all in your hands if you want it. On that note, here’s a shameless plug of my music (available on your favourite streaming service).

Practical Steps For Developing Your Unique Sound

We've discussed the big-picture ideas to help you develop your unique sound as a musical artist/producer. Now I want to go over practical steps you can engage in to actualize your sound.

Your unique sound is obviously unique to you.

I can't tell you what it is or what it will be (though I could tell you how it resonates with my tastes). I also cannot tell you exactly how to get there, as I'm not you.

That's work you must do yourself.

However, I can offer some practical ideas and actions steps to consider as a way to help you develop your unique sound. Here are but a few:

Take Notes On Your Favourite Tracks

I touched on this yesterday, but it's worth repeating.

Write out what you find unique about your favourite artists, along with what you dig about their sound. Use this list as inspiration to develop your own sound by combining various ideas.

Use Limitations To Your Advantage

“When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl.” – T.S. Eliot

Overwhelm is a real thing (I touch on this in a previous newsletter). Limitations focus our creative energy and reduce the feeling of overwhelm.

Of course, self-imposed limiting beliefs are bad (that's a topic for another newsletter).

But when it comes to the creative process, self-imposed creative limitations are great. They spark creative problem-solving, stretching the use cases of what you have, and narrowing your focus on actually creating (rather than scrolling through lists of plugins, sample libraries, tracks on the mixer and timeline, etc.).

I like to visualize limitations in 2-D space as a contained circle and ideas as overlapping circles with the boundary of the limitations.

Creativity so often comes at the intersection of ideas. We can have bigger ideas and more of them, fit them into a smaller space (through limitation), and benefit from more intersection between them.

In this diagram, we have an outer circle representing our creative limitations.

The smaller circles within these boundaries represent ideas. Some ideas are larger than others, and the intersecting regions (the darker areas) of the ideas are where the magic happens.

The orange dots represent the proverbial dots we connect between our different ideas.

Limitations are also physical as well. Make music with whatever gear you have. If you don't have what you believe you need, find another way to achieve the sound you imagine.

For example, I once had a Fender Strat that had severe fret buzzing everywhere past the 12th fret. I wanted to play the high notes in a session I was working on, but couldn't make it work on that guitar.

My solution, in the moment, was to run my Strat through my Whammy pedal, set in two octaves higher, and play the lines further down the neck on the lower strings.

This became one of my go-to sounds in subsequent songs.

That's just an example—I'm sure you have limitations you can use to your advantage in your own studio and work.

Never Overestimate The Power Of “Happy Accidents”

Remember that learning (and creativity) is exploring the unknown.

What I call “happy accidents” are incidents where you stumble across something amazing through free experimentation.

If they truly speak to your tastes, you can refine and repurpose these sounds into your style.

Produce In A Style You Know Little About

Want to supercharge your “happy accidents”? Produce a track in a style you know little to nothing about.

Going in blind will throw you into the unknown and your instincts will lead down creative paths.

Going in through study of the genre will lead to structured learning, which leads to enhanced creativity.

Either way, you'll find something to carry forward into your style, should you choose to.

Intentional Imperfection

Perfection is an ideal worth striving for, but it's only an ideal.

Furthermore, in the age of digital audio, “perfection” (or close to it) can sound sterile and lifeless.

Intentional imperfections give a sense of soul and humanness to our music. Adding off-grid, out-of-tune, unprocessed, uncanny, and noisy elements (or anything else that could be deemed “imperfect”) can add beauty to your sound.

This is an extension of the art philosophy I subscribe to that argues we should learn the rules first and then bend and break them.

Unintentional imperfections are mistakes. Intentional imperfections are art.

Of course, getting a tight, polished and “perfect” sound is also a sound in and of itself. Think of the tuning and processing in current Pop music or the strict-to-the-grid editing trend that has been in Metal for some time now.

Whatever sound you're going for, make it intentional.

Use Templates (But Don't Let Templates Use You)

The easiest way to recreate your unique sound in music production is to create and use templates.

You can set up your unique instruments, signal flows, and overall workflow in a template or preset. Now any time you want to explore that sound, you won't have to spend time retracing your steps to get there.

The caveat here is to not allow the templates to stifle your creativity. Add to and evolve your sound (and your templates and presets) over time.

Use Synths And Effects

Some of my favourite and most unique sounds come from synthesizers and effects.

The world of synthesis is fascinating to me—and one that I've admittedly only dipped my toes in. However, the things I've come up with in wavetable and frequency-modulation synths have become staples in my sound.

The same goes for effects. There's only so much variety you can get out of a DI'd guitar. But the tonal palette is pretty well limitless with effects. A Whammy through a Crybaby through a DL4, as an example, gives up a world of sound to explore.

Use Unique Samples

Savant is one of the most prolific (and one of my favourite) electronic music artists. He reuses samples all the time, giving a distinct flavour to his music, even though it spans across a wide number of subgenres.

Mixing engineers reuse samples all the time, too (especially drum samples). Chris Lord-Alge is a famous example with a superb and distinct sound who reuses samples.

My advice here is to create your own samples rather than relying on sound libraries if you want to make specific samples part of your sound.

Pushing things even further, we have tags. Now, I wouldn't recommend this in the vast majority of cases, but they're worth investigating.

“Maybach Music”—any fan of rap throughout the late 00s to now has certainly heard this tag.

Yes, tags are a fairly extreme example, but extremes prove points. You can be sure that the track is at least unique to the Maybach Music label when you hear that tag.

Master A Musical Instrument

It's mind-boggling to me how many people want to produce music without first learning a musical instrument. I'm not saying to have to learn an instrument, but to me, and my experience, they are inseparable paths of study.

By the way, when I say “real instrument”, I mean any physical instrument—guitar, drums, piano (which translates well to the world of virutal instruments), horns, strings, woodwinds, synthesizer, sampler, anything.

As a guitarists, primarily, I think of my guitar heros: Jimmy Page, Guthrie Govan, Chuck Shuldiner, Thomas Erak, Steve Howe. They all have their own unique style that they bring to their projects (especially on record).

It's difficult to not develop your own style when mastering an instrument. From the specific instrument you play (like my old Fender Strat), to the development of your technique, the sound you translate from your mind and soul, and even the mechanics of your physiology.

Even if you don't necessarily play the instruments in your music, it's invaluable to have a working knowledge and understanding of them.

Find Heros Outside Of Your Genre(s) Or Instrument(s)

I produce an eclectic mix of genres in my music.

I own this to opening my mind, and actually enjoying listening to a wide variety of styles.

When I was younger, I only listened to metal and hardcore genres because that's what I wanted to play.

But things really started opening up when I got into new genres of music.

Savant and Skrillex opened up the world of EDM. John Coltrane opened up the world of Jazz. Stravinsky opened up the world of Classical. Yes and Supertramp got me into Prog Rock. Flying Lotus and The Number Twelve Looks Like You showed me how to connect dots.

These artists are all still massive influences in my work. Follow the threads of their work to lead you to new artists, and expand your own sound in the process.

Let's Wrap It Up

Thanks for sticking it out with me. I have a lot of thoughts on developing as an artist.

I hope this newsletter has given you insights and practical steps to take as you develop as an artist.

You can check out my “unique sound” for yourself here (and let me know if it's original or not)—I'd sincerely appreciate you pointing me to similar artists!!!

‘Til next week,

-Art