How does one achieve originality while not just being compared to influences

[Real Human Bean]

Imagination

(or try making music with your nose)

[sweepstakes]

Another angle I would suggest is asking yourself what is you favorite and most important song / album / style etc. and focusing on that as your sole influence. Burial dove into UK garage, Boards of Canada pulled from 70s docs and media, Drexciya created their own fictional world, etc.

...

You could also do this in terms of musical equipment or method choice, even in very simple ways. 0PN did it with looping bars of pop songs on eccojams and the Field did a similar method coupled with 4/4 beats on his early albums. Same with DJ Screw back in the 90s. These are considered unique and influential artists despite their very clear connections to previous existing music.

I've personally had limited luck with the first idea (probably due to lack of discipline) but I've always loved it. I often think about specific aesthetic spaces between several different tracks or albums and wanted to dig into them and create things that could only exist there. With sufficient discipline and dedication, I believe one could find fertile ground that way, in the forgotten alleyways between momentarily passe but interesting and enjoyable ideas and sensations.

 

The second idea seems to be very fruitful to me. I'm always trying to get the most out of 1 or 2 tools at a time; it's really the only way I know how to work effectively. Those limits pry you away from functional fixedness and practically force you to discover new things.

[joshuatxuk]

what everyone is suggesting here is too close to what i'm trying to get away from

applying methods that other musicians have used to achieve what they have done

I'm trying to not be ground breaking but attain a level of enlightenment where i'm as you saying in between the lines of everything.

Probably get labeled as a mishmash of styles with no clear direction.

 

I dunno, I listened to some of your stuff and skimmed most of it and you've got a pretty cohesive and consistent style. Just hone in on what you are doing now. I was half-expecting you to be dipping in all sorts of styles and genres but that's not the case at all from what I gleaned.

[LimpyLoo]

 

Squee, didn't you study music/sound design at uni?

Yeah? :)

I'm just saying you seem to value discipline and studiousness (based on your actions and the quality of your stuff), but your advice doesn't reflect that

[spunktronics]

 

what everyone is suggesting here is too close to what i'm trying to get away from

applying methods that other musicians have used to achieve what they have done

I'm trying to not be ground breaking but attain a level of enlightenment where i'm as you saying in between the lines of everything.

Probably get labeled as a mishmash of styles with no clear direction.

I dunno, I listened to some of your stuff and skimmed most of it and you've got a pretty cohesive and consistent style. Just hone in on what you are doing now. I was half-expecting you to be dipping in all sorts of styles and genres but that's not the case at all from what I gleaned.

That stuffs just sorta hiphop beats n stuff, material I'm referring to is more eclectic.

[Entorwellian]

An unhealthy dose of mental illness, brain tumour or a pervasive development disorder mix also helps

[spunktronics]

Thanks for the input guys n gals I really appreciate what everyone is saying..maybe it's just taking me a really love time to get something together that I'm total happy with.

 

I'm trying to create an honest expression of my feelings through the medium of sound whilst trying not to just rip off other artists. I could easily smash out loads of stuff in various styles but I would rather make something that's truly a representation of what I'm trying to achieve.

[spunktronics]

Fucking hell I sound like a reet dweeb...

 

Should have carried on making IDM.

[xox]

Originality is the principle mark of genius. Be genius! ...that's it! 

 

''Genius is a talent for producing something for which no determinate rule can be given, not a predisposition consisting of a skill for something that can be learned by following some rule or other.''

- Immanuel Kant

 

''Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.''

- Arthur Schopenhauer

[xox]

also, think more about contents and less about forms

[LimpyLoo]

Genius isn't completely mysterious to us...it has something to do with deep (and novel) insight coupled with deft manipulation of the materials at hand towards this or that goal...it's really just the hero archetype applied to the realm of ideas/concepts/metaphysics/what-have-you...

[Squee]

 

 

Squee, didn't you study music/sound design at uni?

Yeah? :)

I'm just saying you seem to value discipline and studiousness (based on your actions and the quality of your stuff), but your advice doesn't reflect that

 

 

Oh, but I didn't pay any attention at all, haha :)

I was there and I participated but I was more interested in actually producing stuff than just talking about theories and other people's work. So when I would get home from school or work I would just sit down and make music and sound effects. I value discipline when it comes to not giving up and everyone's approach to reaching one of their goals on the long strings goals they hopefully look forward to reaching is different. I mean, if you really like "this" kind of music, then don't be afraid to let it inspire. If you're simply doing a rip off of some track then shame on you but I'm sure you're gonna learn something from it. You might compress it differently than what you usually do and that'll teach you something about compression etc. All of this will end up somewhere in the back of your head and will influence your next track, and that next track will influence your next track and so on. At one point, you won't even notice it, but all of a sudden you're making something that you didn't even think about making 12 months ago.

 

If you weren't allowed to be inspired then fuck... everyone would still be crawling around on all fours. I was reading an article earlier today about a technique for some sound design that I thought was super cool and I'm definitely gonna try and use that technique in my own way the next time I have time to play around with weird techniques.

 

But keep in mind that only listening to one kind of electronic music won't expand your horizon on bit. If you're afraid of making repetitive music then do yourself a favor and listen to repetitive music and see if you can find out why the repetitiveness actually works. I noticed earlier today that my iTunes library at work is 95% soundtracks because I don't really like listening to electronic music that much... but I love making electronic music. Weird, huh?

 

Also, whenever I write posts like this I'm afraid that I start to overthink my own situation and my own ways of working and that the next time I sit down and start working on something new I'll start thinking about this post which will send me down a rabbit hole of stupid "creativity" thoughts.

 

Again, don't overthink stuff, man... just play, have fun, and be a good boy.

[xox]

cant and schoppy are totally clear. nothing mysterious to me and i can easily recognize one. 

[LimpyLoo]

Sounds good to me

 

As far as the "I don't listen to electronic music but I make electronic music" thing...I actually don't see that as strange or contradictory...it makes sense to see the insane possibilities and control afforded by the tools of electronic music...while also not being terribly impressed with how such tools tend to be used by others

 

Or something like that

Edit: @ squee

[Brisbot]

Don't worry about being original. Just make music that you enjoy.

Sometimes you'll make very original stuff, sometimes it'll sound a lot like some track made before. 

[Redruth]

op, they'll always say it, compare you to something.. someone..

 

try listening to strange musics from forgotten corners of the world right before you sit down at yr gear; then sit in silence for an additional 1/2 hour and think about what you'll do next. write things down if it helps. most importantly, be patient and take your time when creating anything. don't release yr art until you are truly satisfied with it ..and even then, take a pause; stash it away and revisit it again later. don't give in to the pressures and the expectations of others. what you create represents you and that is not th they's business until you allow it to be. it is important that you are honest and portray yourself accurately in your musics. i believe proper artists make art on their own terms. if that means no money or success so be it but a dishonest artist is a sad sad thing indeed.

[Brisbot]

 

 

op, they'll always say it, compare you to something.. someone..

Yeah, that's also how humans work. Their brain connects it LITERALLY with things they've experienced before. Goes for everything since you were a baby who didn't know how to move correctly.

 

And believe it or not, for all of us, it did that with Aphex. He in no way made music so original, it was alien. For example, half of the tracks on the RDJ album sound like lullabies. Very simple melodies that we've all felt before, or heard similar ones. Just with a unique twist.

[Ragnar]

reinterpret something that already exists in a completely bizarre/autistic? mindset. Like wtf did my 6/7 ragas to an IDM beat have to do with actual ragas

 

I'm kind of serious though - like streets of rage music is dope but it's really just 16-bit versions of crappy dance music that was around at the time, and probably the prodigy as well. It was as natural as someone using brostep for their videogame soundtrack today. But you didn't know 90's dance music as a kid maybe?? kids growing up today don't know the term brostep when they're 8 hopefully? Like take /that/ feeling that it is somehow singular/not related to those things and figure out what the hell it does to your brain where it doesn't feel like it belongs to a genre or anything

[Ragnar]

here is another example - what in the hell would possess you to listen to music like this a kid unless you knew it in the context of ren and stimpy

 

 

and my brain definitely wasn't advanced enough to go 'oh that's some random 50's library music, that's neat' Like I'm saying being introduced to it in the context of ren and stimpy did /something/ to your brain where your first thought is probably ren and stimpy (or a spongebob episode that stole the same track), not like THIS

 

 

 

would be a cool feature to be able to pick a random song from youtube on a generic webpage with no song title/artist/genre but even then you'd have your preconceived notions of whatever??

 

 

another instance of genre confusion maybe?? ghost in the shell music, maybe you thought it was some kind of japanese music but it's actually gamelan?

[IOS]

You start sounding original the minute you stop any conscious intention of copying (=stealing) other people's ideas.

[ignatius]

if you make any kind of music that doesn't fit right in a little box.. if your melodies and beats skitter around or there's abstract things happening you are going to be compared to autechre.. period. when your music gets reviewed.. autechre will be referenced. 

 

i'm ok w/it really. ;)

 

original?  idk.. just make whatever you're into and makes you happy and eventually you'll have your own take on it and find your "voice" or whatever.  if you do it long enough and make enough music eventually you're going to hear something you made and think "oh shit.. that's just like this song by so and so"  but whatever.. the more songs you make and finish the probability of some of them being in your voice and actually being good goes in your favor. so just make a shit load of tracks and you can pick and choose the ones you can live with.. or just put them all out and fuck everyone 

[IOS]

Imagination

 

(or try making music with your anus)

 

[Redruth]

haha ragnar  :)))

 

 

btw, there is nothing new under th sun.

[Acit]

"The modernist thirst for originality makes the mediocre artist believe that the secret of originality consists simply in being different." Gómez Dávila

[flacid]

that's truly a representation of what I'm trying to achieve.

 

No disrespect but it sounds like you're unsure about what this is. 

 

As others have said you will be compared to certain artists/genres whatever you make. Soooo you might as well make stuff that you feel like making and show what you want to show.