How To Find Your Signature Sound By Copying The Music You Love
When I first started producing music I was obsessed with the idea of sounding original. This desire for originality would lead me to practice unnecessarily long music fasts.
My hope was that these music fasts would allow me to listen to the melodies and sounds inside my own head, leading me to the development my own original and recognizable signature sound.
At the time my logic was simple:
If I don't expose myself to others then I can't be influenced by them.
No input = Original output.
I was convinced this was the path to originality.
After all, these practices seemed to be effective for composers like John Williams and countless others.
So why wouldn’t they work for me?
Now, after nearly a decade of producing music, I understand that as a beginner this strategy wasn’t just counterproductive but these fasts starved me of valuable lessons, insights and breakthroughs in my creative journey.
Even on a personal level, the basic pleasure of listening to a good song on a nice drive was out of the question.
Despite this, it was a sacrifice I was willing to make for the sake of originality.
Copying My Way Out Of A Creative Block
As I continued practicing these music fasts it was clear my creativity was at an all time low. In the following weeks and months I battled with creative blocks, resistance and fear.
I felt uninspired with no sense of musical curiosity.
What were once fun and exciting studio sessions now consisted of a stirring pot of emotions such as doubt and procrastination.
I was stuck in a perpetual loop of creative anxiety.
My creativity was flatlining.
After months in this creative funk, I was desperate for any solution that would reignite my creative fire.
All I wanted was to get back to the excitement, wonder and curiosity I had when I first discovered music production.
It wasn’t until one day I tried a creative exercise that would change it all around for me:
Copying the songs I loved.
Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy, at the end of the copy you will find yourself.
- Yohji Yamamoto
Up until this point in my musical journey I had never attempted to copy another artist song.
I had learned some simple songs on a piano and played the chords to my favorite songs on a guitar. But I had yet to recreate my favorite songs as a music producer inside a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
This creative exercise would unlock some of the biggest breakthroughs and allow me to gain a holistic understanding of the creative process and music production.
But how does all of this relate to your development as an artist?
Well, if you’re a music creator who has made a lifelong commitment to this craft I believe it’s in your best interest to continuously increase the quality and novelty of your music.
This is because originality and authenticity is the currency of the creative world.
If you want longevity in your musical career, cultivating and shaping your own recognizable signature sound is one of the most impactful ways to become distinguished in most music scenes.
At least for me, I can attest that throughout the years, copying and deconstructing the songs I love helped me expedite the learning process.
Most importantly it helped me gain clarity on the subtle nuances of the creative process and music production by helping me understand how to:
Steer and guide the development of my own signature sound (still in progress).
Develop creative challenges and systems which increased my productivity.
Improve the quality and clarity of my music.
Generate more original ideas.
Quickly induce flow states.
But despite all these benefits it’s surprising how many producers don’t find this practice to be worthy creative exercise.
So why don’t we start there?
What discourages so many artists from recreating the music they love?
What Stops Artists From Copying?
It took a creative crisis for me to finally experiment with copying music.
Looking back a lot of the resistance for copying music was due to my limiting beliefs — Or lack thereof.
So I set out to try and understand the ‘why’ behind this resistance.
After some research and reflection I concluded most artists neglect copying as a viable creative exercise for 3 main reasons:
Ego
Beliefs
Lack of awareness
So to get a better picture let's dig a bit deeper into each of these.
The Ego: Some Artists Are Their Own Worst Enemy
The responsibility of the artist is to transcend the human ego.
- Hubert Selby
I’ve seen a lot of beginners fall into the trap of their own ego.
These are the artist’s who believe they can skip the fundamentals and ignore the path laid by those who came before.
They are the artists who want to fly musically before they can walk.
However, to create quality music that will resonate deeply with others first we need to master the fundamentals and prioritize what is actually important in music production.
Truth is, when you’re a beginner you won’t find what a good mix sounds like by looking within yourself. Instead, you have to study good music (the music you love).
Understanding what makes it ‘tick’ and why it's effective and pleasing to your ears is essential if you want to create music that moves your listeners.
This is why my music fasts quickly became destructive instead of insightful.
The way I see it, looking within yourself for answers as a beginner is like trying to get water from an empty well.
While you might have deep seated emotions, themes and concepts you want to express you still haven’t gained the skill of expressing these ideas clearly.
First we must humble ourselves and accept that we don’t know much of anything. We will make bad music, and a lot of it.
As beginners our efforts our better spent learning the flow of the creative process:
How to take an idea from concept to completed song.
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.
- Pablo Picasso
Once you’ve gained the confidence and skill of consistently completing a cohesive piece of music, maybe then you can soul search and seek inwards for inspiration.
But as a beginner, remember the ego is the enemy of the apprentice. Learn from those who have walked the path you’re on.
Beliefs: Stigmas On Imitation & Social Conditioning
In our modern culture there's a strange stigma when we touch on the topic of imitation.
A lot of these can be traced back to our collective beliefs as a society, or as I’ve come to identify it:
Social conditioning.
Social conditioning is defined as the intentional process of training individuals in a society to respond in a manner generally approved by the society at large.
In my personal life I can pinpoint this social conditioning back to the education system, peers and even other artists.
On social media it's not rare to see the common expressions make their rounds in artists circles such as:
“Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”
“True art comes from within, not by copying others.”
“Art is about self expression, not repeating someone else's.”
While all these do contribute to the success of an artist, it's clear that from a very young age and for most of our adult life we’re being conditioned to believe there is something fundamentally wrong with copying others.
But if we dig deeper, we realize that imitation is essential in almost every discipline.
In fact, even greater than that, copying is a human instinct, a survival tactic and a fundamental way in which humans learn and grow.
Imitation is how we learn language, habits, skills and how we relate to one another.
If you look back in history, many great artists and masters started by imitating their idols.
For example, take the life of famous painter Vincent Van Gogh.
Through the years Van Gogh copied countless popular art pieces from his time. These copies would then help him develop and perfect what would later become his own iconic style.
Best-selling author Austin Kleon says it best when asked about the concept originality and how it relates to Van Gogh:
Van Gogh was actually an art dealer for part of his life and spent a huge amount of time collecting images but what he did that's so interesting (that all great artists do) is they sort of absorb all this stuff. They take it in and then what they put out is something unique. If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism, if you steal from 100 authors it's research. Steal Like An Artist is a fairly traditional message in that this is how art got made for hundreds of years. Our whole concept of being original as in you're just this unique soul who pulls out interesting work out of your soul or your brain or whatever, that’s kind of a new invention.
- Austin Kleon
So if one of the most stylistically iconic and original painters in history carved some time for copying the greats of his time what makes us believe we can't benefit from the same exercises in our own creative practice?
Truth of the matter is all creatives copy and imitate someone or something to some capacity. The only difference is for some it’s a conscious act and for others it’s an unconscious reflex.
Finally, it’s important we understand where the beliefs we hold stem from. Since they might not be ours at all.
We must be open to the idea that and even those imposed or repeated by society need to be questioned, especially in this context when history shows us that imitation was a such a crucial chapter in every great creative’s development.
Now let’s move on the last reason.
Lack Of Awareness (The Benefits Of Copying The Music You Love)
Many audio creatives don’t make time for copying the music they love simply because they’re unaware of the profound benefits (As I once was).
Below I’d like to highlight the most valuable breakthroughs, lessons and insights I’ve gained from copying the music I love throughout the years.
Copying Improves The Quality And Clarity Of Your Music
Copying your favorite music is more than just practice, it's a deep dive into what makes music clear and effective.
For me, this approach was eye-opening as it highlighted the gaps in my own music and showed me what I needed to improve on to reach a professional standard.
It’s like opening a box of legos with no instructions, all the pieces are laid out for you but you simply have the picture on the box to guide you (The finished piece of music).
When all of the pieces are laid out like this, it becomes easier to understand how they all work together to create a good song.
Over time this practice gives you a deeper sense of clarity and understanding which helps you increase the quality of your music.
Copying Helps You Develop Your Own Signature Sound
Besides improving the quality and clarity of my music, a benefit I noticed is an increase in my music's novelty.
It’s in this novelty where the magic lies, because this is what will pave the way for the development of your unique signature sound.
But how does it happen?
In my experience, replicating our favorite songs uncovers the musical preferences, patterns, and habits of the artists we admire.
These discoveries oftentimes offer us a rare glimpse into the thought patterns that guide our favorite musicians’ creative decisions.
Eventually, you'll reach a point where you can shed your 'musical training wheels,' internalize these lessons, and infuse them with your personal touches.
So you want to be mindful about who you copy, because you’ll end up hearing fragments, accents and echoes of their sound throughout your music.
Copying Music Helps You Create More Original Ideas
A great benefit about copying the music you love is that each song you copy contains an abundance of musical ideas and interesting bits of audio.
This is all material you can pull from to later dissect and create new seeds or simply get inspired from.
Ultimately, you can use your copy sessions as a bridge to spark your creativity for your own original ideas.
At this point you wouldn’t even have to finish copying the song, since it’s already served its purpose as inspirational material for your new original production.
Copying Teaches You How To Induce Flow States
One key lesson I gained from copying music was getting a deeper understanding of how to reach flow states.
My theory is that the act of deconstructing a song flips the creative process on it’s head, which helps avoid the the Blank Canvas.
The Blank Canvas represents the resistance one feels when presented with a blank canvas, which is the realization that there is an overwhelming infinite number of starting points for an idea.
But what makes copying so effective at achieving and understanding flow states?
My research led me to am insightful quote by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who outlines the optimal conditions for flow:
The optimal state of inner experience is one where there is order in consciousness, achieved when psychic energy—or attention—is directed towards realistic goals, and skills are aligned with the challenges at hand. Focusing on a goal imposes order in awareness, requiring one to concentrate on the task and momentarily set aside everything else.
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
This quote listed two essential elements for tapping into flow states:
A realistic goal.
A concrete plan of action.
With these 2 pieces in place, execution becomes the focus.
A clear goal narrows our concentration, while a plan provides a roadmap to realize it.
Ultimately it’s the journey on this path where we will most likely encounter flow.
It’s in this state of mind where engagement is so deep that external world seems to fade away.
So keep in mind that in order to tap into flow we need an achievable goal coupled with a clear plan of action.
Now that we’ve uncovered some of the obstacles and explained the benefits let’s move on to the actionable section of this newsletter.
Here I’ll share some tried and tested practical exercises which continue to help the development of my own authentic sound.
How To Steer And Guide The Development Of Your Signature Sound
Here I’ll detail specific tried and tested creative exercises, workflows, and unique challenges that I've personally developed over the years.
My intention with these exercises is not to hand you a one-size-fits-all solution. Rather, my hope is that these will spark your creativity and encourage you to devise your own creative games, challenges, and systems.
Some of these will be practical and straight to the point.
Others will be out-of-the-box and more unique.
You decide how they might fit into your process or if they don’t at all, this is simply what has helped me.
Let’s begin!
Mapping Your Musical Influences
There’s a famous expression which says…
“You are the average of the 5 people who spend most time with.”
Well, I’ve adapted this expression to fit within the context of music production as:
“You are the average of the 5 artists you reference most.”
Because before we even begin to copy songs or start consciously developing our signature sound it’s important we establish who our musical influences are.
Mapping your musical influences is critical if you want to bring some sense of rhyme or reason to your productions and direct the style of music you want to create.
This exercise is extremely simple and only consists of 2 steps:
Take out a piece of paper (Or your preferred digital note taking app)
List your top 5 influences (Include what you like about them, what you wish to emulate from them)
If nothing comes to mind or you can’t decide who gets to be in there, then simply look back at the data (It doesn’t lie).
Go into your Spotify or Apple Music history and list the top 5 artists you’ve been listening to most as of late.
It’s important to note that this list is not definitive. It should grow and evolve with you.
If over time your music taste changes or you decide to take your music in a different direction you can always come back to the list and update it accordingly.
An added benefit is that by keeping this list fresh and relevant you’ll pick up various techniques and influences over time which in the end will give your sound a more patchwork-esque and unique feel.
Ultimately, the purpose of this list is to serve you as a north star and give you a general sense of direction.
If you find this list to be too limiting or stifling for your creativity, don’t use it.
This is meant to work for you, not against you.
Curated Musical Inspiration On Demand
Like I mentioned earlier, each song you copy contains an abundance of ideas, musical fragments, chord progressions, and samples you can pull from.
The problem is a lot of these ideas aren’t easily and readily accessible when we are deep in the valleys of creative flow.
Especially since the creative process requires you to adopt 2 opposing mental states.
Analytical
Creative
It’s important we understand these 2 mental states and we compartmentalize them as much as possible.
Switching between these 2 mental states in a session disrupts our flow and increases our odds of getting distracted. Which is why there’s nothing more disruptive to flow than tuning out of it to look for the perfect sample on your hard drive.
The good news is that technology has come a long way and now we can collect and organize our material. In most cases without even leaving our DAW.
These systems I’m about to share with you are nothing groundbreaking.
However, if you’re a beginner these examples should help you understand how you can organize your musical assets for maximum productivity.
Curated MIDI, Samples and Preset Folders
To avoid disrupting our flow during creation it’s important we prepare all of our inspirational material beforehand.
Ideally, our material should have been curated in it's own dedicated studio sessions, and should follow your preferred sonic aesthetic.
The reason you want all of this material easily accessible from within your DAW is because it helps you stay focused and prevents you from auditioning and searching through thousands of options.
Now you might be wondering where you can get samples and MIDI files from your favorite music.
Here I’ve listed a few of my favorite tools:
Splice
FADR
Chordify
Supreme MIDI
You can also watch this reel by my good friend Dayne S to get a glimpse on how he organizes and streamlines his libraries in Ableton.
Audio Swipe Files For Instant Inspiration
As a marketer and digital creator for the past 10 years I’ve learned some tricks of the trade.
In the digital marketing world there is a tool we often reference called a Swipe File.
A Swipe File is a folder containing a collection of tested and proven advertising, sales letters and curated inspiration which are frequently referenced by marketers.
For example, in the marketing world the kind of material you would find in these folders would be:
A good headline.
Catchy or clever logo.
Billboard you came across.
Screenshots of digital ad you liked.
Any piece of content you found intriguing or made you stop.
After years of creating my own Swipe Files for my marketing ventures I realized that I could also apply this concept into my musical creative process.
So one day I came up with Audio Swipe Files.
Just like a Swipe File, I define Audio Swipe Files as a curated collection of short clips of proven and tested song sections from the music I love.
These short bite-sized bits of songs allows you to bypass a lot of the ‘overthinking’ which happens when we are presented with a creative problem which has and infinite amount of solutions.
These references can quickly get us through the stuck phase and quickly presents us with a tried and tested solutions which we can apply or adapt to our current creative problem.
For me, Audio Swipe Files are generally made up of a 10-20 second section of a song.
If you set some studio time aside you can very easily create a few of these in a span of 30 minutes.
Over time if you periodically make time for this practice you'll start to have a pretty sizable collection of inspiring song sections you can reference for your music in the future.
Just as a with our musical influences, these song sections will guide our creative decisions which will ultimately end up shaping our sound.
Reference Formulas: Creating Novel Musical Ideas By Combining Your Influences
A creative challenge I developed is what I’ve come to call Reference Formulas.
Reference Formulas are exactly what they sound like. They allow me to create formulas from the music I’m referencing.
These formulas allow me to combine different elements from the diverse music sources I’m referencing all while allowing me the flexibility to be as specific or as broad as I want with my prompts.
I find this to be a great tool to kick start new ideas when I'm not particularly feeling inspired or creative.
Here is how you create Reference Formulas:
Select 2 songs (They can be from differing genres and artists, have fun with this.)
Select 1 element or idea from each song you would like to emulate in your original production.
For example:
Drum Section from "Beat It" by Michael Jackson + Chord Progression from "Creep" by Radiohead.
As you can see, with the drum section and chord progression we've already set a nice foundation for a song.
All we would have to do next it fill in the other parts with our own musical ideas and finish the song.
As you go deeper into this project, the song will start taking an identity of it's own. Oftentimes masking, reinterpreting and hiding the source that inspired this song.
The most exciting part is that you will be doing this with your favorite artists, and choosing which sections and ideas you want to take from each.
The possibilities are endless and your formulas will be unique to you.
How To Hide Your Musical Brushstrokes (Using Your Favorite Music As Inspiration For Original Ideas)
The phrase "Hide your brushstrokes" is a common expression among painters.
This popular saying refers to the process of creating a painting with such a smooth and seamless appearance that viewers find it difficult to recognize the techniques used or pinpoint the sources of inspiration.
But how do we translate this concept within the context of music?
The main objective here is to get creative on how you can alter your favorite musical fragments in order to give it a fresh new identity.
Similar to your Reference Formulas here it’s all about how you re-contextualize and reinterpret musical ideas.
Sometimes this can be achieved by changing a few notes in a melody. Other times by completely distorting and reimagining the core essence of the ideas.
To get your creative juices flowing, below I've outlined a few practical methods I've used in the past:
Layer Sounds
Modify the Key
Combine Genres
Alter the Rhythm
Creative Sampling
Change the Tempo
Harmonic Variations
Reverse & Apply Effects
Swapping Instrumentation
Rewrite Lyrics In Your Voice
By using these techniques you can incorporate elements from your favorite music into your own work in a way that feels new, personal and exciting.
Depending on how creative you get with these, most listeners will not the ear to catch the ideas you're referencing. This is because more often than not they won't have the same music taste as you or would have never heard of the songs or artists you're referencing.
A lot of times the development of your own signature sound is simply about taking proven ideas and remixing them with your own personal spin on them.
Finding Your Authentic Signature Sound
Now that we have a greater understanding of the struggles and nuances involved in creating your own signature sound it’s also important to note that these strategies may not be for every artist.
Some will prefer a more natural and careless evolution of their sound while others might want to take a more active role in the direction of their music (As I do).
There is no right or wrong way, there is simply what works best for you.
Whichever your preferences might be, the lesson here is that you’ll need guidance and mentorship from others.
This can be through copying the great works, by studying and deconstructing your favorite artist’s music or by learning from other creators in person or online.
Thank you for reading, until the next one.
Talk soon,
— Hermes
P.S. If you're serious about finishing more authentic music, evolving your sound, and building creative momentum, here are 3 ways I can help:
→ Creative Foundations Vol. 2 (Free): A 17-page starter guide to help you consistently finish more music. Inside, you'll discover the proven 5-stage creative process I teach artists—so you can overcome blocks, organize your ideas, and develop a sustainable songwriting flow.
→ Signature Sound Workshop (Waitlist): My step-by-step mentorship program to help you finish more music, develop a recognizable sound, and build a body of work that’s true to you. The beta version is open now for a limited time.
→ 1:1 Mentorship & Coaching: Apply to work with me directly. Together, we’ll identify and eliminate your creative bottlenecks, refine your unique sound, and design a personalized workflow for long-term growth.
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