Pretty simple curiosity. Share your journey from wanting to sound like any other artist to finding your own personal voice. Are you still in that journey? How long has the journey taken? Do you care about finding your own voice? Does it matter more to sound like other artists? Do you believe that you have your own personal voice?
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The moment it clicked for me (and I started actually releasing music) is when I realized that I donāt actually want to sound LIKE Burial, Loraine James, and my other favorite Hyperdub artists; I want to make music that gives me the same feeling that listening to their music gives me. The end result could and should sound very different from them.
So instead of trying to chop up vocal samples (a technique that will probably never really work well in my brain chemistry) or try to meticulously make loose-sounding drum patterns, I leaned into my strength: giant chords. Dramatic chords with a lot of tension and resolution. Thatās the thing that comes easiest to me and I need to start there with my songs. But the aforementioned artists help prevent me from sounding like, say, Wagner and instead sounding like Infinighost. (Future Hyperdub artist? lol)
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Never wanted to sound like anyone else in any substantial way.
Any time I momentarily started imitating, I seemed to shoot off on a tangent immediately.
I donāt know why. It could be a defect. But thatās the way things are.
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This is maybe more vague than the prompt is asking for but here goes. Cool topic, but the way!
When I started out, I wanted to sound like all the late 90s warp records. I failed miserably but I kept trying. My music was embarrassingly bad and Iām glad most of that early stuff is lost to time.
As I get better at making music, Iāve naturally found āmyā sound. I think I can definitely hear my influences, but itās undeniably me rather than a weak imitation of my idols. Iām not trailblazing anything unique, but Iām making music I want to listen to - I donāt particularly care if I do or donāt sound like any particular thing these days, or if Iām doing something truly novel. I do admit I enjoy it when someone says āthat sounds like [artist I look up to].ā
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Well, Im in the middle of my journeyā¦
But I see it working out like thisā¦ I started trying to make music like other artistsā¦ but my lack of musicianship left me lackingā¦ but i kept making tracksā¦
Now I study music full time at Chicago City Colleges, and I am making tracks that sound way better than when I beganā¦
The kicker is, I can now make tracks that sound like cheap knock-offs of who I am trying to emulateā¦ and that is a huge win for meā¦ Like you bought Chase and Status off Wish.comā¦ or whoever.
I am getting good enough to where i can make tracks sound like the originals with alot of effort and skill, but I also know if I just go off my gut, and go by ear, that the music I make will always sound goodā¦ NOT GREATā¦ just goodā¦ and that is enough for meā¦
its more about the process instead of the result for meā¦
or as a wise man once saidā¦
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Never really tried to imitate anyoneās sound because when Iām thinking about that sound, Iām usually thinking about death metal, and synths are not exactly the best tools for that.
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off topic
I made a couple black metal-ish songs with synths. Short plucky sounds, filter off the bass, run through a fuzz pedal and you can get great tremolo picking-style sounds by using an arpeggiator. The songs arenāt amazing but it was a fun experiment.
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Iām having a different experience with it. In trying to write instrumental electronic music to post on the forum, Iām sounding to a large degree like a pastiche of my influences, even thought I donāt want to sound like any other artist. The best Iāve been able to manage so far is that Iām not plagiarizing anythingābut I can see where all the stylistic limbs of each Frankenstein monster I create originally came from.
I finally realized that I had to be humble and just keep going through this process, being somewhat derivativeāitās a part of finding oneās way to an original voice, assuming thereās an original voice in there eventually waiting to break freeā¦
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Hmm. Iāve never tried to sound like any particular artist.
I did however, in the beginning, want to write tracks I liked dancing to from 2-4AM or liked chilling out to from 4-6, or cruising around post-party with my pals. All the post-anthem, alcohol-free hours, which were my favorite for a decade and change.
But I found quite quickly that I just donāt write that. It bugged me for a bit until I decided just to go with what I enjoy making and see what happens. Thatās been the case for years now and itās quite a nice feeling to realize that I actually have A sound. Iām not sure what it is, but most of my tracks have IT, whatever it is.
One of the best feelings in the world was when I was listening to an old playlist I hadnāt named and enjoyed a couple of the tracks and then realized it was me. So I guess I like my sound. 
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Never. Gonna. Happen.
My journey has been trying to sound like my idols, failing, then eventually realizing that āfailingā is kind of how your sound comes to be.
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Hopefully I wonāt sound pretentious but figured Iād try to answer anyways. Cool topic!
I donāt think I ever really started out trying to sound like a specific other artist. Maybe certain techniques like āHow do I get BoC drumsā but more as an ingredient to learn.
I play a lot of different instruments and have gone through a lot of phases / styles just for fun or with friends. This might be part of why Iāve never tried to sound like any specific thing.
I listen to a ton of music that isnāt what I want to make but I think it still seeps into my output all of the time. Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine. Other noisy rock shit. Hip hop. Funk.
At the end of the day, I just follow the train of inspiration and make whatever I feel like.
Your influences end up being your language but itās still up to you to say what you gotta say.
If you to make minimal house, thatās cool but you might not be as good only using the language of minimal house.
Having a broad appreciation of music and using that (consciously or more likely subconsciously) is what ends up being āYour Voice.ā
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This is a cool take 
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If your in a cover band, yes!!
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Not sure if I ever wanted to sound like anyone else. Most likely I tried and failed because of either lacking talent, musicality or gear.
Nowadays Iām more often obsessed with making my gear sound like something else. Trying to get as close a possible to THAT 606/808/ā¦ with my A4 for example. Admittedly pointless seen in a certain light. But thatās nerdy me just having good times. 
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Most likely people will tend to sound like a Genre when they start.
iām constantly wrestling with this fucking question. two observations:
the first āartist i wanna sound likeā stopped being that when i got to know him, and had a short period of being his mentee. i have maximum respect for him and love his music, but somehow working closely and learning some tricks, etc., from him evaporated the wish to exist in that particular musical wake. like, heās already got that style absolutely locked and itās just silly to make a poor manās version of it. iām thankful to have been snapped out of it.
second is that for a while i basically wanted to make the kind of music that ancient methods plays as a dj. to simplify, that is pretty hard and industrialised mid-paced techno mixed with ebm mixed with goth-y/neofolky/liturgical vibes. the thing is, though, he was MIXING tracks from those discrete styles (which is the trick of it imo), not really playing tracks that contained them all. then in the past few years, other producers have had the same inclinations that i did and have started making music that directly combines these styles/vibes in ways that slot very neatly into that ancient methods vibe. if thereās a āproblemā there itās that others beat me to it (lol), and that āwhat i would like to sound likeā has shifted from being āthis vibe that ancient methods often conjuresā to āthe handful of artists who are developing that soundā, and in that āshiftā the the inspiration gets a bit too close to vibes-plagiarism for my liking.
i think my solution is to not force anything, and to have faith that what i make (whether through natural choices, differences in gear/workflow, differences in taste, incompetence) will differ enough. thatās very much a brain-off approach, but hmm maybe thatās just how it goes.
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This !!
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I canāt help but sound like myself, and thatās probably why Iām still working in a shop waiting for the trends to come back around some time in the year 2034.
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When I first started out, I just wanted to sound like myself. The results werenāt great. After a few many years, I figured it would be better to learn the rules for each genre first, and how to mix them well.
Since then Iāve stepped back and thought about all the small things - techniques, vsts and ways of working that Iāve discovered myself - and incoporated all of these into something that feels like āmy soundā.
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