Finding your own sound: how producers make their music stand out

Soberboy is sent a great deal of unreleased music to listen to. His most frequent comment is not about the mixing or the arrangement. It is that the track sounds like a hundred others. I asked him what he means by that and what a producer should do about it.

What makes a track stand out when you hear it for the first time?

Something in it that I have not heard before. It can be a small detail, such as an unusual chord, a vocal treated in a strange way, a groove that sits slightly behind the beat on purpose, or a sound that clearly did not come from a sample pack. That is enough. What does not stand out is a technically clean record built entirely from the same tools everybody else is using and arranged in the same way everybody else arranges them.

People assume they are competing on quality. They are not, because a high standard of production is now normal. Almost anyone can make a track that sounds professional. What people are really competing on is whether their music is recognisable.

Why does music that sounds like everything else fail so completely?

Because there is nothing for the listener to hold on to. A DJ listens to hundreds of promotional tracks. If your record sounds like the previous twelve, there is no reason to remember it, no reason to save it and no reason to play it, because they already own something that does the same job. You are not being rejected because the music is poor. You are simply not being noticed at all.

Being different does not mean being difficult to listen to. It means having one element that is unmistakably yours.

How does a producer find that element?

By narrowing their focus instead of widening it. Most producers try to do everything, and as a result their music sounds like an average of everything. Identify the part of your music that people respond to, and then push it much further than feels sensible. If people react to your chords, build every track around the chords. If they react to the atmosphere, allow the atmosphere to take up more space than the drums.

It also helps to create a few sounds that genuinely belong to you. Record something yourself. Resample your own material until it no longer resembles the original. Break an instrument and keep using it in that broken state. A sound taken from a pack can never become your signature, because it is available to everybody else as well.

Is there a quicker way to do this?

No, and that is the part people do not want to hear. It takes years rather than weeks. You will make a lot of music that sounds like your influences first, and that is a necessary stage rather than a failure. Your own sound appears through volume of work and through time, because after you have finished enough records your own habits begin to show up on their own.

Give the process time. Chasing whatever is popular this month guarantees that you will arrive late and sound like a copy of something that has already passed its peak.

Where does branding fit into this?

Branding is the same question asked visually. Your artwork, your artist name, your track titles and the way you write about your music should all point towards the same idea as the music itself. If someone could exchange your cover art with another artist’s and nothing would seem wrong, then you do not yet have an identity. You have a template.

Branding is not decoration applied on top of the music. It is a promise about how your records will feel, and that promise has to be true.

Why do you tell people to ask whether they want to produce at all?

Because a lot of people are producing out of a sense of obligation. They want to be DJs, and at some point they were told that nobody takes a DJ seriously without releases. So they spend years making records they do not really care about, they come to resent the process, and they get worse at the thing they actually enjoy.

Producing and DJing are two separate crafts. One is solitary and slow, and most of it is spent alone with a technical problem. The other is social and immediate, and it is about people in a room. Being excellent at one does not require you to do the other.

Is it acceptable to be only a DJ?

It is completely acceptable, and some of the best DJs in the world do only that. Their skill is in selection, in programming a night and in controlling a room, and it is a serious skill that takes just as long to develop. If that is the part you love, spend your years on it and become genuinely excellent. Half-hearted production will not help your career, but a reputation for never disappointing a dancefloor certainly will.

The only poor decision is doing both badly because you never chose between them.

What would you say to a producer who feels stuck?

Finish your next ten records instead of perfecting the one you are working on now. Somewhere within those ten, the same choices will keep reappearing, and those choices are your sound beginning to emerge. Commit to them firmly, and stop asking whether they fit what is currently popular.