Ways to discover your music style

Today let’s talk about how to discover your sound if you’re an upcoming artist or a band.
To begin with, you’ve got to have great songs, which means what kind of songs are you writing and what do they sound like. We all have our favourite artists and you might notice that they do have their own distinct sound which brings us to the point of finding our own sound as musicians.
Let’s break that down so that you can have some tips to work on when you’re sitting down to write music.

1.  Not Trying to be New/Original

This is one thing we need to start with, it’s not a necessity that everyone has to sound unique as you start, because honestly, you’re not original, neither are we, even your favourite musicians aren’t original because we all have been borrowing and taking ideas from one another and influenced by someone else. So it’s like, you take a lot of different ideas from different artists and it all stews in our subconscious which eventually creates something new and unique which makes us who we are i.e gives us our own unique sound.

2.  What do I want to sound like?

Your sound isn’t something that you discover overnight it’s rather something that you develop over time. You discover your sound along your musical journey, that’s how you develop your own identity as a musician. You have to write songs or record songs to develop your sound as an artist there are no excuses for you to not make music, you might as well just go on create something and that’s how you develop your unique sound in time, it’s a process which you need to enjoy.

3.  Explore.

Understand the genre of the music you want to make. Know the meaning of the music that you would like to put out. Try new methods, and new styles thats’s how you come across the new sounds and the errors that follow sometimes, giving you your unique sound. Listening to different music and even to the songs that you don’t like they’ll help you a lot in developing new sounds as an artist. Keep a track of your favourite musicians/artists, follow them, take all that you can from them and create something new out of it. Add a purpose to your sound that will make it unique.

4.  Being Influenced.

You can be heavily influenced by an artist to recreate a certain kind of sound but what turns out as you try to recreate is a new sound that you as a musician have come up with, completely sounding original because you add your own “thing” it’s just you as an artist, because you’re always “you” even if you’re heavily influenced by any artist. Even the biggest artists in the world do the same, they are influenced by even bigger artists before them to then create their sound. Don’t be afraid of being heavily influenced by a certain artist.

Do find records that you love and maybe even focus on one and try sounding like that for now, later on your choice might change because our sounds develop.
Listen to music that’s decades old and be influenced by that and then blend it with the way you hear music now and by the way you grew up making music, bring them together and create this incredible new sound. Cheers!