How to find out my style?

[damn00]

I'm producing Electro house, deep house music. If you hear my music you would say this is like any other EDM style out there or on beatport top 100. So I want to find out my own style.

Any tips how I can begin or do?

[robogone]

Sounds like you've already decided by narrowing yourself to a couple of sub-genres.

Expand out and try a little bit of everything in any genre. That way you find out what you're good at.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

make sure to listen to music outside of your chosen genre. i don't mean outside of your sub-sub-sub-sub-genre, but outside of edm. as big a perspective on what music can be, the better

[chaosWyrM]

perhaps im not understanding the question but, i think youre putting the cart before the horse.

just make music. make music you want to make and dont worry about what "style" it is. i personally think you limit yourself by thinking about what style youre making.

i started out "trying" to make a certain kind of music, but it turned out that thats not what i make. to this day i have a difficult time saying what kind of music i make...i make my music. its surely influenced by other styles, but it rarely falls neatly into any particular genre.

just make the music that you make, and later when its time to tag it...then think about all the possible tags you can put on it.

[Tricky-Loops]

If you want to make extraordinary music you have to make extraordinary music...

I don't produce deep house (at the moment) but people who know me can be sure that they can expect some funny lo-fi stuff with funny samples and vocals when they listen to my music. That doesn't bring me to the Beatport charts immediately but at least it makes me unique and we'll see what future brings...

I appreciate creative people like Calvin Harris who produce(d) music that others don't produce (for example his "I Created Disco" album was quite unique! )

[Tricky-Loops]

Another idea is to introduce some exotic percussion elements in your deep house songs to make them extraordinary!

[BERFAB]

Try on a lot of hats and see which one suits you best.

I don't make house music, deep or otherwise. And I probably wouldn't recognize it if it bit me in the arse.

However, if someone asked me to make a deep house track, I'm confident that I could listen to a bunch of tracks in that genre and faithfully mimic the recognizable touchstones that make a track sound like deep house. I can do that, because I'm a capable musician. However, the finished product would sound like a non-descript immitation of a deep house track. It would only be memorable for the fact that nothing would distinguish it as a good or great track. And, because I have no particular attachment to deep house, I really wouldn't care.

However, if I started listening to deep house and heard elements of that genre that I thought were appealling, and further, if I thought those elements would be interesting to fuse to a genre that I was VERY passionate about (whaling songs and sea shantys, if you must know), then my unique combination of these diverse styles might truly produce something exciting and worthwhile.

Now, it may turn out that the combination of sea shantys and deep house might ONLY be exciting to ME. But chances are that if the final result excited me enough to keep doing it, then there surely must be others who would find it exciting too.

YMMV of course, but this is, after all, art, not science.

Cheers
-B

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Now, it may turn out that the combination of sea shantys and deep house might ONLY be exciting to ME.

i dunno...the idea of 'shanty house' is getting me pretty excited.

[BERFAB]

Now, it may turn out that the combination of sea shantys and deep house might ONLY be exciting to ME.

i dunno...the idea of 'shanty house' is getting me pretty excited.

Thus proving my point!

[foosnark]

Style is something that emerges naturally as you make lots of music, as honestly as possible. If you have a goal in mind, what comes out is not genuinely your style.

Also, be diverse and eclectic (unless you just hate doing that, because it's not your style to be that way...). Taking a wider view will prevent you from being stuck at a sort of false vacuum/local maxima.

Be prepared for your style to change over time, or to find that you don't have just one style but two or more which may or may not blend well. (Personally I love percussion and rhythmic complexity, but I also love dark ambient textures and unearthly noises.)

[RunBeerRun]

Style is something that emerges naturally as you make lots of music, as honestly as possible. If you have a goal in mind, what comes out is not genuinely your style.

+1 , I don't see how anyone can start out imitating if they're honestly trying.

[Sendy]

Work out (a) what brings you to sound and music and (b) what YOU want to say. Build a world for your music to evolve in. Style can only be a conduit for form and substance - for your intentions. So forget style and forge a new sound based on your own personal tastes. And definitely, what everyone else said - listen to a lot of music - whatever you're attracted to. If you feel a certain type of music is taboo because it's too cheezy or just not cool - definitely check it out.

[V0RT3X]

experiment,work, experiment, work, experiment, work

[Sendy]

I think a lot of the problems people getting into music today have stem from a top-down approach. A bottom-up approach, for creative arts like music, seems much more healthy, and was much more prevalent in times gone by. We live in a digital world where everything is organized into a heirarchy of sub-types and sub-classes, which kinda brainwashes people into a top-down way of thinking where ideas suffer at the hands of "getting results" and a matrix of pre-existing styles with varying weights of "coolness", when really, the ideas should be cherished and used to build the results, and the matrix of styles used only to help you promote your music after it's finished and matured.

It's the same with politics, people die for ideas instead of ideas dying for people. Soldiers told to guard a monument because it's concrete is more valuable than their flesh and blood. We live in a topsy turvy world. Regocnize that, and do everything backwards from the bottom up. It's an act of defiance that feels good.

[xoxos]

hi! go here, listen to this, dance to this, buy this, live here, use this, and get several of these. stay there, buy more, keep yourself busy and don't cause much of a fuss.

culture just kind of hits you running from the gates. slow down, learn how to not do things. in doing so you gain some objectivity on activity.

i find it kind of silly, like that 15 years arturia picture. silk pajamas, two keyboard racks with some plasticy controllers, a whole bunch of cardboard boxes and a scuffy formica floor.


some people may see dreams! i think, what kind of vapors that floor is releasing in fifteen years. i'm thinking about the effects of fifteen years of track lighting staring at lcds three feet from your face.

so people can have style.

do the swine in their stalls have style? "oh i do kind of a laying on the side and rocking back and forth kind of thing".

it's not that i particularly despise any element here, but what i see is people following aspirations held in front of them without greater direction. is it hedonism, spiritually fulfilling to be creative, i think it is mainly consumerism. what does style mean when decades later you realise all you've been doing is keeping yourself busy, learning how to distance your current state from previous venues, and battering your eardrums.

what is the alternative?

INTENT

you can blather in externally imposed definition or turn to inner definition. why electronic music? to refine your senses, articulative finesse, do you have a message, function, purpose?

in this case, form is subjugate. if you do not have intent, instead of barging ahead, question where you are going before you wind up somewhere you didn't want to be.