"Don't try to be like your influences, seek what they sought."

[rlm297]

I read a quote that said something like: "Don't try to outright be like your influences, seek what they sought."

 

This makes a lot of sense, all while being kind of obscure for the latter.

 

Why would someone want to emulate someone else? I think this might be, because there is an actual goal to reach by doing that. You've either emulated someone right or you didn't. (If I look like this, if I dress like this, if I write songs like this, if I make a shopping list of all the gear they use and buy it... then I've reached the goal.)

 

However, when you're doing it your way... the options are limitless and there's always this wonder of "am I there to where I need to be yet?"

 

"seek what they sought."

 

My question is... what exactly do people seek other than attention, money, fame, looking cool, getting laid, or understanding their life through art/music?

[blue2blue]

Great topic.

 

I didn't grow up playing music. Although there's some truth in saying I grew up frequently trying to learn. (As folks around here can probably recite along with me) I (or my parents) were told by at least two professional music teachers that I had absolutely no musical talent whatsoever. So, when I finally, somehow, managed at 20 to stumble through months of playing the same two chords back and forth, back and forth, trying to get it to sound like music, and get to a point where, if I squinted just so, it did sound sorta, vaguely like music, for years I didn't really worry about the possibility of absorbing too much of some influence. I figured it was so unlikely that I would ever sound like anyone I liked (or that anyone liked) that I had carte blanche.

 

(That came crashing down in the 80s and nineties when people started saying things like, Oh, your voice reminds me of Bowie... or Lennon, and then, the odd one, Tom Petty. I mean, the first two, along with Jagger, I could see, since I really listened to a lot of solo Lennon, old Stones, and Bowie -- but Petty? (Yes, I saw him once, enjoyed the show, bought his first album but...? Still, even I can now sort of see what they mean. I think part of it is simply our vocal mechanisms. Poor guy.)

 

But seeking what they sought -- yeah, that makes sense for most of the people I've bonded with over the years. (OK, who the hell knows what all Bowie wanted -- including Bowie himself. But clearly he has always had a keen intelligence and a desire to keep progressing as an artist -- and that is something I recognized and did want to emulate.)

[rhino55]

Rather just emulating your influences, you should listen to what influenced your influences and let that influence you.

 

I should never type that word again.

[Cliftonb]

In most cases, I like the influenced artist a whole lot more than the influencer. I find myself many times saying "that inspired THAT?!?" This and pretty much all other songwriting advice doesn't work for me - probably why I finally decided to give up songwriting.

[kurdy]

 

In most cases, I like the influenced artist a whole lot more than the influencer . I find myself many times saying "that inspired THAT?!?" This and pretty much all other songwriting advice doesn't work for me - probably why I finally decided to give up songwriting.

 

 

I think such advice is mostly meant for budding musicians who idolize one band or one artist

[Cliftonb]

Yeah, I agree with you as my own list of influences reads like a Wire Primer. The whole "give up songwriting" thing was in reference to me giving up on the craft of "pure" songwriting. Interests of mine like classical composition, beatmaking, free improv, video game/amine scoring, and sound installation don't really fit the songwriting paradigm that well so I've had to reconfigure my musical goals.

[Matximus]

Most good, fresh popular music comes when smart & talented guys and girls reach back about two or three generational rungs toward the source of most of today's popular music: what poor black Americans from the south were doing with simple folk songs in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What you do is spice it up with something current - generally a sentiment or dynamic from current times.

 

If you are making original songs that deal with topical matters, it is almost guaranteed that you are doing some 10th or 12th-generation bastardization of Black American folk music. That music established some very basic musical vernacular that is incredibly appealing and adaptable: And it set a lot of the yardstick for determining what sounds pleasant to people's ears today.

 

The further your music is removed from this music, the less pleasant your music sounds. I 100% believe this. The most successful and appealing artists tend to reach back one or two generational rungs toward the source and spice it up a little bit.

 

Amy Winehouse - who was undoubtedly great - reached back to the straight up sound and production of 60s Soul - all she added was topical themes and a bit of jazz in her voice: Singing about drugs and being {censored}ed up over a slightly slicker Stax sound. That's good bidness.

 

Everybody likes to say Nirvana was clever extention of the Beatles, but in truth he was closer to the simple repetition and directness of mid-to late 50s rock and classic blues, but he amped it up with Black Flag loudness and did the new sentiment think: singing about Apathy.

 

I think a lot of the producer-driven popcraft that makes the charts today springs from the melodic and production tricks sprung by Brian Wilson and Phil Spector a couple generations back. Brian Wilson, like the Beatles, was all about Chuck Berry & Everly Brothers.