How to make your music unique

There was no way around it; most of my musical ideas back in the 1970s sounded like The Beatles. Either that, or I was making up jagged-sounding, inaccessible jazz rock in odd meters. It took years to free myself up from the self-criticizing inner voice that edited and shut down the flow in my mind that was like hearing a radio station. By the 1990’s I could both hear what was in my head and write it down. Now I have written hundreds of songs and more coming, but it’s been a long road to get here. A lot of my songs have come to me in dreams or upon awakening, and it turns out that this is a common phenomenon among songwriters. I just have to snap myself out of it long enough to realize, "Hey! I’ve never heard that before. I’m making it up." Hilarious.

I started out singing like John Lennon. My voice just happens to sound like him. So I wrote songs that would be in his style. Eventually I was able to incorporate my own ideas. Now my songs sound like a bunch of different artists, but not one in particular. I can’t really sing anymore so I use studio vocals.

I have been learning to listen to and critique my own music, listening for dead spots, so-so lyrics and where song sounds off. I find I will listen to a song I am working repeatedly, to find glitches, iron out kinks and find the more I listen, I almost always find something to change or improve.

Hi Chris,
I worked many years in Customer Service / Call Centers. I was constantly told my speaking voice was different, unusual or just weird. So I totally accept my singing voice for what it is. Of course I still have to work hard to sing my best.

Thank you Chris! this was very helpful and insightful. I’ve been searching for my artistic "core" for many years and being a voice teacher and having so many different sounds/vocal styles has not helped me in some ways and in other ways it’s kept me working all these years, but now it’s my turn to put my Unique Artistic Stamp on my music. I look forward to hearing what transpires!

I have to be honest, I don’t think or worry about whether I have "found my voice". I just try to bring in elements of everything that I like, learn from great music, and make the best music I can. That is it. I am aware of a kind of evolution that seems to happen, but I don’t try to steer things. Just try to be honest, and make the best of what I’ve got.

Fortunately, for me, this is something that, according to multiple supervisor’s comments, I have down pretty well. Several have actually used with word "authenticity" after hearing my music and I’m constantly told I have a unique, identifiable, and original sound that’s totally mine. This did not happen by accident. I recognized years ago that if I wanted to differentiate myself from the legions of other artists all trying to do the same thing, I would have to develop my own sound. I sat down and analyzed the essence of what it was that I liked about all the songs and artists whose music I really loved, and asked myself why I liked it and with what part of me a given song was resonating. As an example, I liked the way "The Fixx" used space in their music. That was rather novel, and I thought to myself, that’s something I could put in my songs as well. And, as an aside, specifically, my use of space in my music was praised highly in a call with one of the supervisors who said that’s something he looks for with songs that he rarely is able to find. But that was the only thing I took from "The Fixx". With Radiohead, I liked their inventive chord progressions, surprising changes, the soft/loud dynamic singing, etc., and incorporated some of that into what I do. I liked the aggression in Nine Inch Nails, use some of that in some of my songs. I loved pretty much everything about the Beatles, but especially keyed in on their inventiveness and how eclectic and fearless they were. The list of examples goes on and on. But the point is, I didn’t take any specific chord progressions, riffs, or imitate anybody, I just took elements of their approaches. Lyrically, having been an English major in college, I don’t limit myself to being influenced by other songwriters, I’m very influenced by the poetry of T.S. Elliot and several others who are also influences on John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Leonard Cohen – each of whom are also lyrical influences on me. So, by the time you combine each of these very disparate elements into one place, add your own personality quirks into the equation, you can’t help but come up with something pretty original. But this wasn’t a simple process, it took me several years of not putting out much music to refine all of this into something reasonably cohesive without being all over the place. But, I’m really happy I did it as it has served me well and I think it’s something every artist needs to do at some point if they want to stop being a pale imitation of their idols and actually add something new, original, and of themselves to all the noise out there.

I don’t think we’ve ever consciously imitated or wanted to sound like anybody whosoever. We just did what we felt like doing. Perhaps that is why our music may sound like something on one track and totally different on another. Not sure if that is a good thing, but we grew up in a world where writing to or for screen/media was the norm. Maybe that is why that sort of writing became kind of second nature to us.

However, I have to admit, that me, as an individual, would ‘imitate’ poets like R. Tagore when I started writing poetry, and then read writings from many big authors/poets and was only inspired for sure…do not remember actually imitating anybody. Sometimes I listen to songs, read lyrics, and wish I wrote that or like that!

This is a great topic and I feel like writing an article on this. Maybe I will. Thanks, Chris!

Interesting topic. Fo me, i guess i was lucky with the input i got from my parents. We had a whole wall of LPs at home, spanning centuries of music, and i happily listened through all that highly diverse stuff from a very young age. This gave me a pretty big palette to work with, when i started doing my own songs (around the age of 14). The "real me" is a bit of a narrow concept for me, though. I prefer thinking of it as giving the song what it needs to become its best self. thats what i really like about snc (hwere imjust strting out now). You cater to feelings and situations, not necessary to a genre, over a whole body of work. Being authentic for me comes from letting every song go the way it wants. This makes it harder to pin down my musical self, but each one holds a strong aspect of me, too.