How to Find Your Sound as an Artist
Have you ever heard a track and just known who it was made by in the first few seconds? Their musical identity and signature sound are clear. That is the topic of this blog post, which is just as much for me, trying to remember things I have forgotten and need to implement, as it is for everyone else. This blog covers stripping back the arrangements, refining your tools, being careful with samples, doing case studies on artists with a strong signature sound, and some of my takes on the classic advice for defining your own sound in music.
The first piece of advice I would have about finding your sound is stripping things back to the basics musically. If you were to take out as much as possible from your music and leave only the essential elements, what would have to stay? When I ask people this question in one-to-ones or coaching sessions, the first thing they normally give me is a list of important things, but not essential things. I think this is one of the first steps to being able to refine your sound. This idea is inspired by the band the White Stripes and Jack White’s rule-of-three aesthetic (riff, lyrics, beat), you can hear it in the music and see it in the colours of the music videos. So my first challenge would be to refine your music down to only the three elements that make up the essentials. No more. Then make an idea with only these parts. Personally, it would have drums, a pad and a bassline. If you give this a try, the three-element tune, I would be super interested to hear what you make. When I have time, I will also try and post my results here too.
My second idea is to think about refining your set-up technically. One mistake I see beginner producers make is downloading loads of different synthesisers and software instruments without any restraint. I think having too many synths in your arsenal can be a hindrance to finding a defined sound. When I think about some of my favourite artists, such as Ed Rush and Optical, a part of their sound is the specific hardware that they use, such as the EMU sampler, Pro One, OSCar and Prophet 5 (for some of the classic tracks I like). I also remember interviewing Hybris years back, and he mentioned making a whole track only using one synthesiser for every single element. So my point is not to get hardware. Instead, it is to take time to narrow down your tools to the essentials. I think having an endless list of plugins to choose from steals a little something from creativity. If you could only have 1 EQ, 1 compressor, 1 synth, etc, what would they be? Recently, I took on this challenge and made a whole track out of Absynth 5 synth from Native Instruments. It wasn’t great, but I learn a whole bunch from doing it, and my creativity went through the roof when I later expanded my equipment just a little more. Here are my essentials for music production:
Fabfiter Pro Q3
SIR Standard Clip or Clipshifter
Valhalla Reverb (Room or Vintage would do)
Serum 2
ShaperBox
With only the above, I think I could make an EP, possibly even an album. If you want to see me try, let me know 😂, I’ll call it the 5-plugin-album challenge.
I think sample packs are excellent, and I make them myself on this site. However, like anything, they can be a problem if you use them incorrectly. If you just grab all your samples from one pack and drop them into the DAW without any processing, manipulation, editing or whatsoever, then this is a problem. There is no opportunity for you to put your individual stamp on the sounds. It would be arranging the sounds to some extent. To be fair, this is what I did on PlayStation's Music Maker Game, and I was having a lovely time, so I wouldn’t knock it. However, for building your own sound, samples need a bit of moderation and manipulation. For beginners, I think sample packs are a double-edged sword. The positive is that you get to work with cool sounds and get quality results efficiently. On the other hand, the skill of crafting, defining and developing your own sound suffers. To improve, once again, I would suggest that you make the samples you do choose work hard to fit your ideas and aesthetic. Not using too many, but making the most of each one.
I remember hearing some advice from Mike Monday about making your own sound, where he suggested that you make a playlist of 10 songs that have been really important in shaping your musical tastes and journey. Then do a deep dive study of these 10 tracks to see what the commonalities are between them all. My playlist had such a varied bunch of music on it, but it taught me a lot about myself. My tracks were:
Data.Matrix - Ryoji Ikeda
Dangerous - Michael Jackson
Misery Business - Paramore
The Cure & The Cause - Fish Go Deep
Re-Rewind - Craig David
Falling Into You - Celine Dion
Regretta II - Ot to, not to
Glory Box - Portishead
Genie In a Bottle - Christina Aguilera
Shook Ones, Pt II - Mob Deep
Notice that I didn’t put any Drum and Bass tracks on there. I found that when I got introspective, while I make that music, it doesn’t make me who I am. I think that was one of the most important lessons I learned was getting some objectivity and distance between myself and my art. This felt like a big step for defining my own sound, understanding that music is only a part of my output and not what makes me, me. Songs are the ripples behind the boat, a by-product of personal growth, and bittersweetly always behind your current skill level.
Another thing you can do outside of the studio is study artists or labels that have a strong signature sound, I found it really helpful to try and boil what makes them unique down to four words. For example, I think the artist Burial has a really distinct sound and when I tried to define it as four things, I found:
Late-night ghosts of the rave (Vocal chops)
Melancholy (Game/Film Samples)
Atmospheric (Rain crackle, vinyl, foley)
Garage Nostalgia (Beats and Grooves)
This might not be the same for everybody else, but I think it is a pretty accurate representation of the sound. Once you have done this for a few case-study artists, you can think about using the same skill to define your own sound. When I spent some time trying to define my own sound, I came up with my own list of four things that I want my music to be, and remind myself of them before I start a big project or a new piece of music.
I think one piece of advice that really stuck with me is to creatively run towards what scares you. I remember reading this in a book called Evolutionary Psychology, where they suggested that, as humans, we still have some leftover ideas from living out in the wild, where sticking with the group meant safety and survival. We still get a feeling of fear when we are going to stand out from the crowd. So to define your own sound, use this fear as a guide creatively (of course, still be safe personally), but creatively in the music, be adventurous. If something is a bit new and scary and just outside your comfort zone, normally, this is a place of growth and something that will make you stand out. From this standing out you further progress your own defined sound.
This section contains some of my takes on classic advice for developing your own sound, most places I read give this advice, but don’t really say specifically how you could approach that thing. So I have the classic generic advice first and then a practical way for you to explore this more.
Generic Advice
How to actually implement
Be creative!
Include more self-imposed limitations in your practice and review which ones help you achieve a flow state, and review which approaches moved you closer to your goals.
Just write music!
Set a regular time to do music as often as you can possibly manage, even if that is only 15 minutes a day, it all adds up. Also, review often to see what is going well. It is also important to show people your work.
Stay true to yourself!
Write out what your core values are around music, and try and define what you want your music to be on paper. Then, after each big project (an EP for example), look back and review what you need to do for next time to either refine your values or better align with them. My other tips above about working with only the essentials for a while can also help with this.
Break the rules!
First, make sure you know what the rules of the genre are and write them all down. Then focus on bending one of the rules as far as you possibly can, for example, one of the rules of DnB is that it should be somewhere in the region of approx 170-180 bpm. But when producers started exploring 160bpm, it gave a distinctive sound. Another example of this is that DnB normally uses a break-beat pattern, but when people have made 4-4 or swung beats, it has made them stand out from the crowd.
I hope that helps to give you a few ideas of how you can develop your own signature sound and musical identity. Please remember that you can visit the store on the website, where you can get 1-to-1 tutorials, coaching and feedback for your music, where I can help you with developing your own signature sound.
Matt Chapman26th October 2025