What’s your characteristic sound? A question that is hard to answer for most producers, but I’ll share some of my thoughts about it today:
3 THOUGHTS FROM ME
1. No original content comes from imitating other artists. At the same time, your ability to not imitate other artists comes after you’ve imitated several artists for a long time. Avicii mentions that exactly in his documentary True Story. In other words, to think outside the box, you must know pretty well what is inside the box first.
2. Originality is not only your ability to make what others have never created yet, but to use common elements to create in a way no one has done it. In other words, it’s not a problem to copy an idea from a sample pack as long as you apply it or change it in a way nobody has thought about it yet. Don’t feel pressured to create every single bit of your track, just make sure to do it in a way that you’ve never seen in the past.
3. The more you seek your ‘characteristic sound’ the more it will go away from you. In order to be original, you must be willing to make ‘trash material’, but you probably won’t accept making crap if you’re relentlessly pressuring yourself to be unique. The key is experimentation without expecting anything. When sound designing, for example, the more you create, the closer you’ll be to creating your characteristic sound. More on sound design in this post.
1 QUESTION FOR YOU
What did you experiment with outside of your comfort zone in the last 2-3 weeks? If your answer is ‘none’, you already know what you’ll have to do this week! Here are some ways you can experiment this week:
1. Introduce randomness to your productions. Instead of linear sound design, try making it less predictive;
2. Limit the number of plugins you can use. Focus on producing only with one plugin, something that Bound To Divide did in one of his youtube videos (link below);
3. Rethink a song you’ve done in a different genre. How would it be played by an orchestra, or by a band?
