Inching Towards my Artistic Style

Trying on musical styles like hats

Photo by Nationaal Archief on Unsplash

The Journey to Cringelessness

As a hobbyist musician, all I’ve wanted to do for a couple years is write and record a song that I don’t cringe at. Quite a low bar, I know. But I figured that once I write a song and there’s nothing glaringly unlistenable in the lyrics, singing, arrangement, or production I will have found the seed of my style and will be able to tinker away at it until I’m creating beautiful music. At least until I’m making music that meets my own standard of beauty.

Goldilocks and the Infinite Bears

There are countless headstones in my graveyard of song recordings. Literally countless, because in addition to the hundred in my music folder right now, there are hundreds more I’ve deleted to reclaim hard drive space. Beneath the vast majority of these headstones lie some heavily unlistenable attempts at songs.

Finding a musical sound as a budding musician is a lot like picking up a paintbrush and putting lines on a canvas haphazardly until you draw the right animal. Which animal? You don’t know. When you happen across something slightly resembling the right animal, you might not even recognize it because the color or the size or the setting is wrong. Most of the time, what you end up drawing isn’t even an animal.

Finding your style can feel a lot like you’re goldilocks searching for the right bed to get cozy in, but instead of three beds to try out there’s an unlimited supply of random furniture.

Close Calls

A couple times, I’ve made something that I’m proud of. Something that’s viable. Something that’s something. But it still just doesn’t feel like me. This is dangerous, because I know I have a seed in my hand that will grow into a fully-fleshed style if I nurture it. It’s tempting to plant it. But I shan’t.

In an essay, Henrik Karlsson writes about “the explore/exploit trade off”, which is the idea that we can either spend time trying new things (“exploring”) or focusing on the best thing we’ve found so far (“exploiting”). His finding is that it’s best to mostly explore in the beginning and then, as time goes on, slowly tip the scales towards mostly exploiting because as time goes on it’s more likely you’ve found more important areas to focus on.

When it comes to a creative pursuit, it feels important spend a long time exploring. This is because creating is a lifelong endeavor, so time is on your side. Additionally, creativity is based on authenticity, so if it’s a matter of exploring until something feels true to you then I say give that journey all the time in the world.

Here are some of my almost seeds:

Pools

I listen to a lot of indie music, so I set out to replicate it. I came up with this beat when I was obsessed with Current Joys. Particularly his songs Fear and Kids where there’s a simple beat with a couple guitars looping insanely catchy patterns. It just doesn’t feel like authentically me though. And there’s a very obvious reason: I’m not actually in a band. I’d like to dabble with this style later on, but first I really want to find a style that allows me to showcase who I am as a lone musician.

Barbaric Days

For this song I was aiming for the style of The Head and the Heart. That kind of emotional indie folk/pop with lots of energy and momentum. It felt close to natural for me but I feel it lacks a laid-backness I want to capture.

Wondering

I mostly listened to Omar Apollo and Daniel Caesar when I wrote and recorded this song. I think this was the first time I used an electric guitar to record, so I was thrilled about the lack of room noise and how it made the recording feel airtight in a way. Still though, it didn’t feel quite right. I love listening to Omar Apollo lay his falsetto over some jazzy chords but that’s not what naturally comes out of me when I sit down and play guitar. When it does, it feels like I’m posing a little.

When it actually feels right

I’ve finally done it. I wrote and recorded a song called Idyllwild and, while I see a lot of ways to do better next time, no part of it actively offends me. I don’t find that it misrepresents me in any way.

When I write a good song, there’s usually a specific artist that I am trying to replicate the style of. For a while I knew I wanted to write sleepy sensual folk, but kept trying to replicate artists that weren’t making that kind of music.

For Idyllwild, my inspiration matched my intentions. My target was a song off of Michael Nau’s demo’s 2014-2017 album called The Glass. Here’s a clip of it:

Without getting nitty gritty, I like to analyze why something inspires me. I like “The Glass” because it’s very spacious and relaxed. The vocals are front and center and the lyrics are the main focus. There are some harmonies to keep it interesting and add texture. With these things in mind, I recorded Idyllwild:

I’m happy to call it done. I don’t think it’s perfect or even close to it. The guitar feels kind of choppy, I wish there were a little more going on, the singing is weak and kind of hiding, and the song just doesn’t drive me along like Michael Nau’s do (probably an issue of rhythm and more gripping vocals). But I the style feels right and it didn’t take extremely long or feel like a headache to record, so I feel like I’ve found a formula that will allow me to iterate and grow quickly.

My Takeaways

Whenever I start a new form of art I want to remember to devote ample time to exploration.

I like all sorts of music and it would be fun to replicate all of it, but in the end I care most about creating what feels authentic to me.

I want to spend more time finding the right projects to take inspiration from, because that’s what made the biggest difference.