Imitation and Influence: Finding & Maintaining a Creative Voice

Hey. What's up? I'm Justin Peake.

I teach drums, Ableton Live, and beat production with Brooklyn Music Lessons. I thought I would start a short series focusing on developing a creative voice. We know what we like musically (and what we don't) from having heard examples. We all have our favorite pieces of music; whether it's that drum solo on that record, that vocal line that the vocalist sings at that moment, that wobbly synth sound that brings in a new beat, or even that way of scoring for ensembles. It is these specific nuances of our experiences that shape our desires and conceptions of what we want our music to be in the future. While this may seem like a relatively trivial fact about aesthetics, it opens the doors for us to explore the double edged sword of our creativity, namely influence, on one hand, and imitation on the other.

Let's get a working definition of these two concepts. As I see it:

IMITATION

is exemplified by re-creation, regurgitation, mimicry, or straight up copying of the superficial qualities of something, in this case, a sound, song, or beat.

INFLUENCE

is exemplified by the production, creation, synthesis, inspiration, of something 'new' through the experience or study of the superficial quality of something - sound, song, beat, etc.

Imitation is often mistaken for influence. Unfortunately, imitation does not leave you with a sound for you to call your own, nor does it leave you with any legitimate claim to authenticity. Don't sell your own creativity short.  It is toward a claim of authenticity and creativity that we strive as artists, to be able to articulate a unique and original aesthetic, deeply ingrained with, yet distinct from, it's influences.

While imitation is not a very desirable end goal for music making, it can be a very desirable and useful step in the process.  One can think of a scientific metaphor. Think of imitation as the research toward a theory and not the theory itself. Einstein would not have been considered as intelligent as he was if he had merely said: "The Earth is Round!" or "There's this thing called gravity".  Why? Because we already knew those things and, while he may have revered those who came before him and said them, his restatement of them would have been redundant and not very helpful to society at large. Instead he used those assertions and incorporated them into his own body of principles and ideas that did garner major attention and influence. It made him a superstar.

Stay tuned for the next post which will touch on practical ways to harness our influences without merely imitating them and ways to think about your influences that may yield new and positive musical thoughts in your practice.

Until next time,

Justin