creativity vs mimicry

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guitfnky
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23 Oct 2021

this guy makes some of the best content out there for music production. this one is something I think about A LOT.

I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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Ottostrom
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23 Oct 2021

Very good video and I've also been thinking a lot about this subject. My Spotify discover weekly can be filled with indie stuff that all have good production and mixing but just sounds exactly the same as everything else. It is hard to be original, but I get far more enjoyment in trying to create my own sound than going for somebody else's

PhillipOrdonez
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23 Oct 2021

There's a bunch one can learn from emulation though.

Anyway this guy sounds so much like the midlife synthesist YouTube, they talk the same way 😂

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guitfnky
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23 Oct 2021

PhillipOrdonez wrote:
23 Oct 2021
There's a bunch one can learn from emulation though.

Anyway this guy sounds so much like the midlife synthesist YouTube, they talk the same way 😂
of course, and he says as much in the vid. his point is that you don’t learn how to sound like YOU by learning how to copy others. you can learn a lot by mimicry, but little to nothing about creativity.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

avasopht
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23 Oct 2021

Thing is, you always have to find a balance between being relatable and original - that's the real battle/contention.

"Mimicry" is what keeps your music relatable.

Creativity is what ventures into unchartered territory.

Randomness is the highest level of creativity possible. But it's garbage.

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guitfnky
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23 Oct 2021

avasopht wrote:
23 Oct 2021
Thing is, you always have to find a balance between being relatable and original - that's the real battle/contention.

"Mimicry" is what keeps your music relatable.

Creativity is what ventures into unchartered territory.

Randomness is the highest level of creativity possible. But it's garbage.
you only have to find that balance if you’re mainly interested in selling your stuff. personally I’d rather do what I do, enjoy the end result and let the rest of the world decide in their own time whether anything I’ve done is worthwhile. gotten a lot of good feedback over the years from a few folks kind enough to give it, but it doesn’t seem like much of what I do is very likely to stick—and that’s okay, because I’m happy with my “sound”.

I don’t agree that mimicry necessarily makes your music relatable—it makes music feel *familiar* which is totally different, IMO. you can be creative as hell, making sounds and music that nobody has ever heard before and still have it translate well into others’ ears. I feel bad for anyone who’s never heard an artist who opened completely new vistas to them of what’s possible musically—stuff they’d never have come close to imagining otherwise.

I also don’t know that randomness is creativity, at least not in an artistic sense. I’d call that “generating”, not “creating”. randomness doesn’t require any actual input or thought (the moment a human decides to change something, it stops being random, and can start being creative). but perhaps I’m just being pedantic.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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Ottostrom
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23 Oct 2021

I don't think thats too pedantic! To say that randomness is the same as creativity is just simply wrong. Creativity needs deliberate decision-making or else it doesn't exist. That doesn't mean that you can't use randomization to help out a creative process but at some point there has to be a determined structure for how the randomness is used.

On the point about learning new stuff from emulation I definitely agree (as he talked about in the video). One could become a really great guitar player from learning how to play a bunch of different covers, but at the end of the day those will never be your original songs. The art of creating something new is completely different but lets you use the techniques you've gained from playing covers.

WarStar
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23 Oct 2021

I'm sure this will sound kinda funny but I try not to listen to music for awhile if I'm trying to get into the creative mindset.. as I've gotten older I listen to less and less music in the car, now sports talk radio lol, but I find I rely more so on just instinct and vibe rather than hearing something I've heard before... Might not work for everyone but works for me. At least I think it does lol

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guitfnky
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23 Oct 2021

Ottostrom wrote:
23 Oct 2021
I don't think thats too pedantic! To say that randomness is the same as creativity is just simply wrong. Creativity needs deliberate decision-making or else it doesn't exist. That doesn't mean that you can't use randomization to help out a creative process but at some point there has to be a determined structure for how the randomness is used.

On the point about learning new stuff from emulation I definitely agree (as he talked about in the video). One could become a really great guitar player from learning how to play a bunch of different covers, but at the end of the day those will never be your original songs. The art of creating something new is completely different but lets you use the techniques you've gained from playing covers.
absolutely—learning how to emulate techniques others use allows us to leverage those when creating our own music, and that can be very useful. but we can also often learn those techniques on our own. for example, I don’t need to emulate Eddie Van Halen’s two-handed tapping technique in order to figure out how to apply that to my own music. just need to understand the basic concept, and experimenting from there will naturally lead me to my own creative approach to it. the opposite approach is also perfectly fine—learning the technique as others have used it and then trying to find your own way. I just believe the first is the more creatively rewarding and liberating approach, but that could just be because I’ve never gotten great results when trying it the other way around.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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DaveyG
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23 Oct 2021

Just to add that it's not black and white. At one end of the scale there are total copycat bands and artists and at the other end there are truly original innovators but the vast majority sit between the two and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Most kids start bands because they want to play music that is similar to the stuff they love. Some bands grow and develop more than others but there is not room for everyone to be unique or original. You can make great music whilst wearing your influences very firmly on your sleeve.

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Ottostrom
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23 Oct 2021

DaveyG wrote:
23 Oct 2021
Just to add that it's not black and white. At one end of the scale there are total copycat bands and artists and at the other end there are truly original innovators but the vast majority sit between the two and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Most kids start bands because they want to play music that is similar to the stuff they love. Some bands grow and develop more than others but there is not room for everyone to be unique or original. You can make great music whilst wearing your influences very firmly on your sleeve.
That's true. At the end of the day it's all about what YOU want to get out of music, and everyone can have a completely different view on that

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guitfnky
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23 Oct 2021

DaveyG wrote:
23 Oct 2021
Just to add that it's not black and white. At one end of the scale there are total copycat bands and artists and at the other end there are truly original innovators but the vast majority sit between the two and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Most kids start bands because they want to play music that is similar to the stuff they love. Some bands grow and develop more than others but there is not room for everyone to be unique or original. You can make great music whilst wearing your influences very firmly on your sleeve.
absolutely. there are pros and cons to all or nothing approaches in either direction. the only thing here I’m not sure I agree with is the idea that there’s not room for everyone to be unique/original. I’ve always believed that people can and should strive to be as creative as they can be—and that almost always, one’s “lack of creativity” is directly related to how little effort they’ve put into trying to be creative.

of course the output of some is likely to be more creatively nuanced than others (meaning, they may end up sounding a lot like another artist, but if you scratch past the surface you’ll see what’s unique about the music). and as you say, that’s okay—it’s great, even. sometimes we want something that’s just different enough from something else we love to keep the flame fresh. for me a great example is one of my favorite recent bands—Hail the Sun—they’re like a distilled mix of two of my earlier favorites; The Mars Volta and Circa Survive. you can clearly hear the influences, but they definitely have their distinct stamp on things.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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