Why you shouldn’t worry too much about originality when writing songs

Most of us songwriters want to have our own style. To create something new. To be distinguished in our art and not be seen as a copy of more successful musicians.

There are some exceptions to this. For instance, I’ve seen a band that was copying the exact style of music of Black Sabbath, though not the actual songs. And it wasn’t like they were trying to hide it. Playing the exact same style of Black Sabbath was their thing, and they were proud of it

Some people like to be like that and, as long as their music is good, like this band’s music was, it doesn’t matter at all if you sound too much like some particular band. Imagine if Black Sabbath released an extra album, wouldn’t you consider buying it if you were a fan?

Many songwriters are not like that though, and give different levels of importance to being original.

I am one who values originality and I think it’s a good thing to have a style of music that distinguishes me and my band.

What is unhealthy, I believe, is when people take their quest for originality too far, and I have met quite a few musicians who do.

One person I met was seriously considering not listening to any music for a month hoping the songs he’ll write afterwards will be more original!

Less extreme examples include people who refuse to learn something like music theory fearing it will somewhat stifle their creativity. That it will make them have to abide by certain rules, at the expense of originality.

Or else, once I was playing with a singer who complained that my riff, sounded “too much like Iron Maiden”.

Since we were playing in a Metal band, at first I took that as a compliment, except that it wasn’t meant like that. It was a fear of sounding so close to another band that our music would perceived as less original.

These people completely miss the point as to what being creative and original means.

In order to create good original music, you don’t need to re-invent music itself!

Neither do you need to invent a new genre.

That would be cool, and many argue that the band Black Sabbath themselves gave birth to the genre of heavy metal.

But that doesn’t mean that every Heavy Metal band that came after Black Sabbath wasn’t original. Some weren’t. But others carried the torch forward and while keeping some of the ingredients of the music used by Black Sabbath and other pioneers, they made completely new music, some of which evolved into new sub-genres

What happens in real life, is that the same basic ingredients of music get re-created over and over, again and again through the centuries.

But for the same reason that the same ingredients in the hands of two different chefs can result in two completely different cakes, by combining together ideas, techniques, musical styles, and other things you listen to or learn on your instrument you can create things that have never been created before, even though if you strip it down, the basic components are similar or the same as has been done for centuries.

Thus, what you should be concentrating on, instead of being original is:

Gaining new skills, techniques, ideas, musical knowledge as well as listening to different kinds of music to have more ingredients when baking your cakes. Learn how to bake great cakes, or rather, write great riffs, licks, solos, and songs, as well as improvise until your mind gets used to thinking creatively, rather than just be able to use the “ingredients” I isolation.

And it’s only then, when you gain enough skills and are able to integrate them that you may consider stretching the limits and come up with something completely new like Black Sabbath, Nirvana, Venom and Jason Becker among others have done.

The main reason we write music is to express ourselves, and we should express ourselves without fear, neither fear that we’re sounding like someone else, nor that we aren’t.

When you’re writing your heart out in your music, you’re also writing out your influences, whether you do it consciously or not. And there’s nothing wrong with that. After all the songs that you have loved during your life are the reason you’re the musician you are today.

They’ve become part of you, and that’s something you should embrace, not fear. Let your influences blend in and without consciously thinking about it you’ll come up with music that’s’ indistinguishably yours.

Robert Callus is a songwriter, guitar teacher and blogger from Malta. Read more articles about guitar playing, songwriting and the pursuit of happiness at www.learnguitarmalta.com/articles