Repetition - habits

[urall]

I was wondering who actively seeks out different ways of creating your sound to not fall in the trap of repeating yourself ?
Or could it be looked at as actually carving out your own place/sound instead ?

I'm recording new stuff today and even it's all new, created in different ways, it still ends up sounding the same in a way. 'Song' structure, and even frequency wise i'm like.. huh sounds like a track i did 2 tapes ago..

[Andrew McIntosh]

I find I just go through stages without necessarily planning. Something I do works for me, or I hear something I want to rip off, and I pursue that line for a while.

[JLIAT]

Repetitive sounding tracks can often be down to the gear used, which has a distinctive sound, N.B. The sound of the Yamaha DX in 80s movies... etc. So either maybe change the gear or the setup. If you are not aware of Eno's Oblique Strategies (with Peter Schmidt) you might give it a look. If you want to delve into more deeper stuff Deleuze's Difference and Repetition... in a nut shell 'only a person with bad intent effectively begins.. '  IOW one tends to stick to the familiar that you like, and think good... so why not deliberately make something bad....? Break the chain...


"Oblique Strategies (subtitled Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas) is a card-based method for promoting creativity jointly created by musician/artist Brian Eno and multimedia artist Peter Schmidt, first published in 1975. Physically, it takes the form of a deck of 7-by-9-centimetre (2.8 in × 3.5 in) printed cards in a black box. Each card offers a challenging constraint intended to help artists (particularly musicians) break creative blocks by encouraging lateral thinking....They were most famously used by Eno during the recording of David Bowie's Berlin triptych of albums (Low, "Heroes", Lodger).  "

[Euro Trash Bazooka]

I think that's an interesting question that I've asked myself as well lately because I've felt like the music I record ends up sounding more and more like I am repeating myself. However, ultimately, I'm just striving to make what I wish I heard more from other artists because my tastes are quite narrow, and I do feel like I've been running around in circles lately, yes.

So I've decided to keep recording stuff but maybe to be pickier as to what I use through everything I record. I've just put together a tape on which I deleted half of the tracks I recorded for each side because I didn't think they were necessary.

I also record stuff that I save for "later." On the split tape that I released this week, most of of the sources have been recorded in late 2019 and 2020 and I didn't know what to do with them then because it sounded like stuff I had done before, but it only made sense to me a few months ago. Same thing with the upcoming release I have in the works. I think it's interesting to be able to pick through a bunch of various recordings that haven't been made for a specific release or to try to assemble things that were necessarily meant to be used together to create new and different moods from the expected ones?

[Balor/SS1535]

I find I just go through stages without necessarily planning. Something I do works for me, or I hear something I want to rip off, and I pursue that line for a while.

I feel like I pretty much do the same.  I get some sound/concept/theme stuck in my head and then try my best to create it from what I have on hand.  I don't think it has ever turned out exactly like I had hoped, though sometimes interesting things come out of the attempts.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

I was wondering who actively seeks out different ways of creating your sound to not fall in the trap of repeating yourself ?
Or could it be looked at as actually carving out your own place/sound instead ?

I do look for it, but don't have absolute need of creating different sounds, as often tracks are sort of "composition", so relatively similar gear works out if songs themselves have different pace, structure and form.

Back in the day, when 4-tracker was the main gear, it often ended up starting with one fairly unique sound, then decided next layer will be this and third will be that and 4th something... and despite recording order of elements was different, and process itself felt different, finally when listening mix-down, it would be quite often: junk noise, bassy humming, feedback and vocal track...   Eventually I drifted to consciously recorded much more live oriented, and focus on distinctive sound elements, where track has interesting (to me) core sound which is different from other tracks. Something that sets it apart from the rest.

However, "repetition and habits", that was eventually becomes style. If one is able to create own style of making noise, I am certainly in favor of that too. 

[tiny_tove]

I am ok with having similarities defining my style when I record. I have some defined processes for some projects, both in tracks that are structured like songs, than for all-out-war sound barrages. So i work on these with the same gear. But having all releases sounding the same would make it lame, so I try to vary by constantly adding new gear or using radically different settings.

Using organic/concrete sounds and interesting samples surely add difference, and contribute to the story-telling I have in mind.