how to find "your sound" as an artist

do you ever feel like you just can't pick a genre you love listening to and making all different styles of music and you feel like your own music suffers because of it well I'm here to tell you that you're not alone in fact I struggled with this exact same issue over a decade ago and now I coach students from all over the world who struggle with the exact same thing and I'm here to tell you that there is a solution to this but it's not much of a problem to begin with now let me explain and to explain this in the best way possible I need to tell you a story about Steve Jobs and apple before he worked with apple before Steve Jobs worked with apple he was very interested in calligraphy so interested in calligraphy in fact that he ended up taking a class on it an entire class on calligraphy and topography and because of that when he started working with apple he wanted to give the users a more beautiful experience and so he he developed fonts or apple fonts because of his love for calligraphy and because Apple had fonts it gave the users a better experience and they had a massive massive advantage in the computer industry most computers were very basic and boring and apple gave just a better user experience because of this random thing that Steve Jobs was very very interested in as a beginner you have to follow your passions and you have to chase the rabbit holes Steve Jobs did he never thought that at the time that calligraphy would become useful he was just very interested in it and decided to go down that path as a beginner you should do the same thing when students come to me and they ask me how do I pick a genre what do I do I usually say just keep following your passions what are you interested in doing what are you interested in making is it EDM today is it metal today is it rock is it CCM what is it today especially as a beginner what are you interested in today and follow that path you might not NE necessarily know where it's going to end up but there's tons of stuff that you're going to learn down that path that is still still very very useful now if you're if you're just trying to make a bunch of covers and you have no interest in writing your own songs or producing your own songs and then this is a different story but this is for somebody who is looking to write their own music and produce their own music because you're looking to make your own sound but yet you're saying well how do I pick a genre but most of the time a lot of genres don't exist for artists they're in the metal Niche but they actually blend a couple different sounds together and they have their own sound and so if you're looking for your own sound for your own music then you have to follow these rabbit holes because the thing is one of the best things I like to to ask my students is when they come to me with that I'll ask them what are you interested in you're like well today I'm really interested in EDM but that's usually not I usually make folk music and it sounds like it's completely off and I say well would making an EDM song get you closer to your goal of learning how to make better music and they you just say well yeah it's like well then it's not a waste of your time you're spending time in the DAW and you're learning how to tweak synth presets or make your own syn synth presets you're learning how to write Melodies and chord progressions you should absolutely go down that path it's going to get you closer to your goal and so you should follow your passions and then you should be able to create your own sound around that so now so once you follow your passions as it beginner now keep in mind this takes time after after a little while of following your passions you're going to pick a couple that just really seem to like get you going every time you make it for me it was EDM it was metal and it was a little bit of country back in the day so I was making all different kinds of things I was making hip-hop beats and trap and I was making metal music and I was making rock and I was making EDM and I was making pop and I had like all of these little things that I was really really really interested in and I just kept going down the rabbit holes and in fact a lot of my friends would tell you that uh they didn't necessarily know what kind of genre of music I was making I remember I had one uh one of my mentors he looked at me and he goes so like you want to be a DJ now because I was making like EDM music and I was like I don't know I was just interested in uh in making EDM music and I I actually got pretty good at it so you as a beginner you have to follow your passions you have to go down the rabbit holes and you have to just keep going in wherever your interest flows because you don't don't necessarily know where it's going to end up later so that's the first part go down the rabbit holes Chase your chase your dreams as a and Chase your passions as a beginner so now the second is the VIN diagram so I'm going to show you a ven diagram I drew up here and right here is is my sound um and so there's like three different genres that I kind of heavily focus on still to this day so we have EDM which I absolutely love we have metal and we have trap and I probably could have added like CCM here as well um but I was working on a track and I want to show you this track in a little bit just to give you like a hard example of how this works and so I just added trap in here as well and so with these three genres I've created my sound and the thing is these three genres have all different stuff that you can learn off of it so as we zoom out here you can see EDM is known for their polished vocals I learned how to get really nice crisp and clean polished vocals how to make my own synth presets and sound design like I went heavy into sound design when I was learning EDM because sound design is a massive massive part of it and so I learned serum and a few other sins inside and out and I know everything about them and I know everything about basically making synth presets and and sounds I know how to even tweak a synth preset and get the the sound that's in my head into a synth um I know how to write catchy Melodies because EDM is all about catching Melodies and getting people hooked to listen to the song over and over and over again and then I learned all about risers and effects and so that was just in the EDM niche in the Trap Niche we have heavy thick fat 808s and Punchy drums in the metal Niche we have loud super loud guitar Punchy in-your-face drums and of course some massive riffage and by blending all of these things together and it seemed like I would never use my synth presets in learning how to play around with synth in the metal Niche and it never I never felt like I was ever going to use my 808s in the metal Niche and I never felt like I was going to be able to use metal drums in the EDM world but I just kept following following my passions and kept going down those rabbit holes and learning all of these things that eventually I started to have this vend diagram of my sound and I kept going down that path and kept figuring out what was working and I just followed my passions eventually some things that I was somewhat interested in kind of went off to the Wayside when I found out that I really wasn't much interested in it because you don't know what you're interested in until you try it until you actually do it for a little bit then you understand what you're interested in and then you can go down that path and so you start to have a couple handful of things that you're very very interested in and then they start to blend together and become your sound so let me show you this track that I made over here and uh to give you a very good example of this Vin diagram and how it all works together this is a blend of multiple uh different little genres [Music] so we have tons of different genres that's going on in here we have this like trap style um 808 and and drums here I have real drums going on top of it with this like heavy distorted [Music] base we have this vocal chant down here that I've just smashed and blend together and have tons of different effects going through it we have all of these risers and effects that I learned from the EDM World vocal hits and then of course massive sounding [Music] guitars and if I would have never chased my rabbit holes I would have never learned how to tweak synth presets or make my own I would have never learned about adding all of these risers and effects and messing around with vocals I would have never even learned what half of these things are what half of these tools are and what half of the things are that are inside of this track specifically that I'm not even done working on yet and so if I wouldn't have followed my passions and I wouldn't have allowed myself to develop my own sound over time instead of trying to rush into everything I would have never been able to make the music I do now and now people want to work with me because they listen to my tracks and they listen to my music and they want to make music that sounds similar to that because now I have my onfair advantage which is if you are in the metal in the Rock Niche and you also like blending elements of EDM and trap into it then I'm the perfect guy for you to hire because there's not a lot of other people that do that and so now because because of my experience I have my outfir advantage in the music industry as well where I'm able to work with artists who do a specific type of genre or looking for a very specific type of sound that I can deliver then somebody else might not be able to for example so find your sound find the overlaps in that ven diagram and then you should never have a forever sound this is a Continuum this isn't a place where you just get to someone and pick it this should continue to evolve over time the Beatles didn't have just one specific sound they always sounded like the Beatles but every album sounded just a little bit different and they all had their different twists on it same thing with all of your favorite artists one of my favorites is Bring Me The Horizon and they have all different styles of genres from album to album to album you can listen to some of their older albums and it sounds super heavy and then some of their albums from a couple years ago was very like modern pop rockish and then now they're going back into that heavy stage with that Mo like that pop rockish elements to it as well I love everything they've done and they never pick one sound they continue to go down that rabbit hole but it still always sounds like Bring Me The Horizon and I love that about it so don't overthink this just go create you'll eventually get there you will eventually get there you just need to keep going this is not a destination this is a journey you want to keep evolving your sound over time you want to keep making music and you should follow your passions you should go down those rabbit holes and know that it's getting you closer to your goal as long as you're making music every day don't overthink it if you make EDM today and you make trap tomorrow or you make a rock this afternoon and you made pop this morning just keep making music and eventually you're going to get good at a handful of things because you follow those Passions and you're going to continue to make it cuz the thing is the more you do the better you get and the better you get the more you like doing certain things and you're going to find that you get really good at just a handful of genres and now you can blend those together to create your own sound so don't overthink it friend I appreciate you being here I appreciate that you're watching this video I have uh a few spots available actually if you're interested in working with me I'll leave a link down below uh if you if you're are interested uh if not no big deal at all uh over here there's another video on my Channel that I think you're going to love YouTube is recommending it to you not sure what it is but anyway hope you're having a fantastic day and I hope this video inspired you to just go make some music see you later

Channel: Andrew Barr

Views: 3,342

Keywords: how to find your sound as an artist, how to find your sound as a producer, how to find your sound as a music producer, how to make original sounding music, how to pick a genre, music production, how to produce music

Id: 6t4nYUypPQQ

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2024