How to Know if You Wrote a Song Like Someone Elses
Wanting to exist original is a universe away from really releasing new and unique music.
All music is informed in some way past the music that came before it. But in an art form with so much history, where does inspiration finish and simulated begin?
It'due south the nearly important question facing aspiring musicians today when and then much music is available so hands.
Nigh ofttimes, the music that ends up finding an audience is made by musicians who've discovered and embraced their originality. You can imitate—lots of songwriters and producers practice—but what you make isn't likely to final.
So how do you accept inspiration and plow it into something new?
It's easy to fall into the faux trap if you haven't nailed downwardly what artists you love and what specifically moves you almost their piece of work.
Today, I'll suspension down the catchy discipline of originality in music-making and give you tips for how to award your musical influences without compromising your ain manner.
Define the music that resonates with you
Start by taking some time to identify your musical influences.
Information technology'south like shooting fish in a barrel to fall into the imitation trap if you haven't nailed down what artists you love and what specifically moves yous most their work.
Identifying attributes similar the fashion an artist sings or how an creative person produces their music will assistance you in a couple of ways:
First, it will permit you to abound your ain original taste and appreciation for music. This is crucial for discovering your ain musical style and perspective.
The more input you take, the more diverse your output tin exist when you lot commencement to discover your ain voice. Synthesizing many different influences rather than imitating one is a unproblematic and effective way to continue your own audio unique.
2d, figuring out what yous're attracted to in another artist's music will help you explore ideas and energy in an original style and strop your interpretation skills in your process.
Boom down your influences and why they move yous. It will give you the tools to sympathize the music you love, interpret information technology better, and use information technology to find a audio that goes way across impersonation.
Re-examine your procedure from starting time to end
At present that you lot take a meliorate idea of how to use your influences, have a shut wait at your own songwriting process.
Examine everything from the mode you write melodies and chord progressions to your preferred instrumentation, to the topics your lyrics cover. If you uncover habits or tools y'all use just because they sound like your favourite music, it's time to change them.
If yous uncover habits or tools you use only considering they sound like your favourite music, it's time to change them.
Simply considering a certain instrument or product technique works for another artist doesn't hateful information technology should—or will—work for you.
All too often, music with loads of potential and energy falls apartment because it's too close to another creative person's identity. Since a song doesn't come fully formed out of the gate, being thoughtful and gratis from the limitations of someone else's ideas in your writing process will give you the best take a chance at making original music.
Using inspiration to beginning is key, simply knowing when to push your process into a territory that'southward all your own is how you avert imitation.
Here's a listing of what y'all should be checking in your process to carve up inspiration from imitation:
Instrumentation
Why do you favour one instrument over another?
If you lot find yourself constantly reaching for an acoustic guitar, drum machine, or MIDI controller to make music, take a moment to enquire yourself why.
Sticking to the instrumentation establish in some other artist's songwriting playbook is limiting and lazy. For songwriters and producers struggling with this, a smashing exercise is to try writing a simple vocal on an instrument that's completely strange to you lot.
Changing your instrumentation volition not only help you recall nearly composition and theory in new ways, you'll also exist able to shed the influence of other artists who utilize the aforementioned gear.
Treat your influence's progressions similar a set of rules to bend and break.
Chord progression composition
Exercise you prefer lush major 6th chords or are yous the kind of author that typically sticks to ability chords?
Your preferences surrounding chord composition in music end up having a massive bear on on the textures, melodies, and atmospheres that make up your songs.
Stack upwards the mode you write chord progressions confronting music from the artists yous're influenced by. If they sound also like, make a real endeavour to change your approach to chord building and writing chord progressions.
Treat your influence's progressions like a set of rules to curve and break. If you lot zig when they zag, you're all the same being influenced by their choices, only in a way that becomes your own.
Lyrical content
When you create lyrics about a sure bailiwick, does information technology come from your ain original voice or does it originate from someone else's perspective?
As a songwriter, the most powerful weapon in your artistic armory is your unique perception and experiences.
When nosotros trick ourselves into believing previously covered topics are the only "safe" ones to write near, that weapon goes to waste.
Lyrics are hard. It's all about vulnerability, which requires songwriting that's brave and open up to your unique perspective—an result that isn't possible when yous're emulating someone else.
Production
The way yous produce your music could be turning original ideas into banal imitations.
Best practices for music production are a great place to kickoff, merely you demand to use them as a base for building your own sound.
If y'all're in the habit of following YouTube production tutorials that aim to show you how to make your rail sound like (fill in famous creative person'due south name here), then the creative choices you're making aren't really yours, or all that creative for that matter.
Best practices for music production are a great place to start, but y'all need to use them as a starting signal to finding your ain variation, not the final step.
Crucial critique
Lastly, it's time to listen dorsum to your piece of work critically. Ask yourself, "What's mine most this?" Instead of judging your music before it'south recorded, wait until your songs are produced and mastered to mind back critically.
Don't get discouraged if elements of what you're writing even so sound inauthentic to your unique voice.
Developing your own style won't happen overnight. Originality in music is tough to achieve, and it can take years to develop your ain true voice.
It's of import to annotation that blazing your own musical trail won't always result in skillful music. Recording and finishing songs is half the battle.
Finding your unique artistic voice is the offset stride. Learning to transform that originality into great music comes afterward.
Developing your own manner won't happen overnight.
Experiment, experiment, experiment
Now that y'all've identified the style your influences impact your procedure, it's time to do some serious experimenting.
This is by far the about of import part of creating unique music. True musical experimentation happens when nosotros're able to allow go of expectations and rigid ideas of how it should sound.
Armed with the new musical insight y'all take about your influences, yous'll exist able to experiment freely.
Discovering what works and what falls flat on your own terms in songwriting is crucial in developing your own vocalization.
Outset comes influence, then comes you.
Source: https://blog.landr.com/inspiration-impersonation/
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