Five Steps to Finding Your Artistic Voice and Style
There are many people who seem to find their artistic style intuitively. They just do a bunch of singing and creating and over time they figure it out.
But I work with a lot of people who don’t find the process intuitive, especially if they went through more traditional music education processes where style was determined by teachers, directors, conductors, degree program requirements, etc.
If you’re one of the folks who needs more specific guidance about how to find your voice and style, here’s a basic outline of the process:
Step 1: Figure out what you already have.
This is kind of like a cook seeing what’s already in the fridge and pantry. What skills, knowledge, preferences, and experiences do you already have available to use in your style?
Here are some of the things I ask people to think about in order to determine what they already have:
Musical Elements
- vocal style
- songwriting style
- instrumental playing style
- vocal arrangements
- instrumental arrangements
- production style
- harmonies
- chord structure and voicing
- rhythms
- melodic shapes
- songs they already know
Non-Musical Elements
- stories they want to tell
- emotions they want to express
- personality
- their story
- their identity
- values and beliefs
- mission and vision
- visual aesthetic
- preferred venues/platforms
- the way they use and move their body on stage/screen
- the way they interact with listeners
- non-musical interests
- mood/vibe/energy
Step 2: Add options.
To continue with the cooking analogy, the cook goes to the grocery store and picks up new ingredients to add to the fridge and pantry. They may also go to some cooking classes, buy a new recipe book, go to some new restaurants and try some new dishes, watch some cooking shows, and talk to some fellow cooks about their recipes and experiences.
You’ll be doing the same types of things:
- Learning and imitating specific elements used by the artists you want to model, both musical and non-musical
- Taking classes, lessons, workshops, etc.
- Reading books, listening to podcasts, watching videos
- Going to shows and concerts
- Talking to and learning from fellow musicians
- Collaborating with new musicians
- Finding new artists and songs you enjoy
- Having new life experiences
- Learning new ways of being in and moving your body
- Connecting to new values and beliefs
- Connecting to new emotions
- Connecting to new friends and communities
Step 3: Start experimenting.
Now the cook plays with all of the ingredients and techniques they’ve gathered in lots of different ways, figuring out what works and what doesn’t, honing skills, making lots of mistakes and terrible dishes along the way. They might make things directly from recipes at first, but as they gain confidence in their taste and their skills, they start tweaking the recipes a bit to make them their own. Sometimes they make up a totally new recipe.
This is where the nitty-gritty of finding your style really starts. Steps 1 and 2 are prep. They’re the mise en place of finding your artistic voice. Now is when you really get cooking.
This is a stage with a lot of conscious, awkward work. The awkwardness can be really fun with the right mindset. But it’ll take a lot more repetition before you can truly get into a subconscious flow with your new style recipes. (See below.)
Finding your own style means you’re trusting and following your own instinct in terms of which ingredients you pick and what techniques you use to mix them together. This is the stage where many people get really stuck, particularly if they’re afraid of making a mess, wasting resources, wasting time, and making bad stuff. So they ask others what to do without giving their own instincts a chance.
When you want to ask for help, consider asking yourself: am I reaching out because I legitimately don’t know how to do this skill or technique? Or am I reaching out because I‘m afraid to trust my instincts or to make mistakes and messes?
There are times when asking for help is smart, especially when someone can show you a helpful technique or save you time by letting you stand on their artistic shoulders. But a lot of your ingredients are totally unique to you, which means no one will know exactly how those ingredients will react to each other once they hit the oven. Building trust in yourself is a huge part of building your style, so lean toward self-trust whenever you can.
If you struggle to trust yourself due to developmental trauma when you were young, working with a trauma-informed creativity coach like me can help you learn to guide yourself in a compassionate, loving, playful way.
Step 4: Notice what draws you in and do more of it.
The cook begins to notice that they really love making sauces. They’re fascinated by the techniques involved and the myriad of ways they can be used. They start choosing more recipes that involve sauces. They start getting better and better at anticipating how different ingredients will behave in liquid form in different heating methods.
As you experiment as an artist, you’ll notice that certain things start to really pull you in. Some artists call it fascination. Others call it obsession. Others call it passion. Whatever it feels like for you, follow that instinct and let yourself do more of that thing.
As you repeat that thing, you’ll continue to hone in your skills and taste and style. Quality will improve. You’ll make fewer mistakes and messes. You’ll start to see connections between your fascinations and who you are as a person. You’ll make deeper connections with the people and communities connected with your interests.
You’ll probably have more than one area of fascination.
Step 5: Do what you love over and over until it becomes automatic and doesn’t require conscious thought.
Eventually the cook can make their signature dishes without having to pay so much attention to measurements. They know it by feel, by look, by taste. Their body knows exactly where to go in the pantry, the fridge, the utensil drawer. Their mind can wander to other thoughts of the day because their hands now know the exact resistance of the spoon moving through the sauce when it’s the right consistency. They innately know all of the tiny pieces of information that accompany the cooking process: the way the steam moves differently at different heat levels, the smell of the garlic when it’s sautéed perfectly. The recipes are now so much more than just ingredients and steps.
This is where style really starts to feel like your style. You make sounds without thinking about them. You no longer need so much conscious thought to do it. You get into creative flow. You can focus on the emotions of the song without having to work so hard for the notes in the riff or the openness of your jaw or the flexibility of your knees or the involvement of your arms in your gestures. It’s all more automatic.
There are also things you didn’t realize you were doing or learning along the way, and they’re all part of your style, too.
The more you do, the harder it gets to explain the smallest details of what you to do others. So much is now happening at a level that surpasses words.
Optional — Step 6: Go through the steps again if you want to try a new style.
It’s very possible that you’ll go through the five steps and then down the road feel drawn to something new.
While many artists have a particular style that we associate with them, some go through multiple style periods before getting to the one we know best. Take Picasso for instance, who had a realism stage, a blue stage, and then the cubist stage for which he became popular.
Some artists find a style, and then add an additional style down the road. They split creative time between the two styles in different projects. But even though they have all of the ingredients and techniques of the first style at their disposal, they still have to go through the steps to develop the second one.
Some people call this spiral learning. You take what you knew and come back around the circle to where you started, except now you’re at a higher plane due to everything you learned. Artistic voice finding seems to be that way for many people. So does vocal technique learning.
The Singer’s Guide to Finding Their Style
I’ve written a guide to help singers go through Steps 1–3 of this process with specific questions and exercises. As of today, the guide is currently only available to people who are working with me either one-on-one or in a small cohort. If you’re interested in either one of those options, apply to work with me here. I’d love to help you.
