u/VendioHandMadeHelp

is the whole "find your signature sound" advice actually bad for most producers?

im starting to think chasing the "signature sound" thing is actually kinda cooked for most of us and were being sold a lie

hear me out. every producer channel, every interview, every twitter thread says the same stuff. "find your sound." "develop something recognizable." "if I hear 3 seconds I should know its you." and yeah, obviously it works for the guys at the top. skrillex, burial, whoever, one bar and you know.

but ive been at this like 7 years now and i genuinely think the advice is backwards for anyone whos not already famous. the artists i know who blew up in the last couple years didnt do it by having some untouchable signature palette. they did it by being fast, being consistent, and following whatever was working that month. one guy i talk to went from lo-fi house to a kind of hard dance thing to now doing this weird trance edit stuff and hes doing better every time he pivots. his fans dont care. they just like him.

meanwhile i spent probably 2 full years trying to lock in "my sound." like really obsessing. certain drum bus chain, certain reverb, certain way i write leads. and all it did was make me slower and more precious about every project. i finished way less music. the tracks that DID come out of that era all sound like each other and honestly none of them are my best work.

i think signature sound is something you notice in hindsight, not something you build on purpose. the people who "have a sound" mostly just made a ton of music and their taste leaked through naturally. trying to force it from the front end just turns into a cage.

the counter argument i keep hearing is that without a signature sound youre just another guy chasing trends and youll never build a real fanbase. and i get that. i was checking my EVEN biz page the other day and yeah, the people who actually buy stuff from me are the ones who followed me back when i had a more specific vibe. so maybe theres something to it. maybe consistency of feeling matters even if the genre shifts.

idk. im in that annoying spot where ive unlearned the rule but havent replaced it with anything better. anyone else been through this and come out the other side? or am i just coping because i cant commit to one thing

Genuine question for the people who actually live in central zones. Do you ever feel weird about not really exploring your own area?

I've lived off Portobello for nearly four years now and had a bit of a moment yesterday. My mum came down from Yorkshire and asked me where's good round here, and I just froze. I could tell her about places in Peckham, Hackney, even Walthamstow because thats where I always end up going for "food adventures" with mates. But my actual neighbourhood? I go to the same two pubs, the pret near the tube, and the sainsburys. Thats basically it.

We ended up wandering and I realised I'd walked past a Georgian bakery probably a thousand times without going in. Had some cheese bread thing (khachapuri?) and it was incredible. Then we passed Trejo's Tacos which I'd literally never clocked despite it being on a route I take at least twice a week. How does that happen? How do you become blind to your own street.

I think theres something about living somewhere that makes it invisible. Like you save the "trying new places" energy for weekends and days out, and your home area just becomes the boring functional bit between the interesting stuff. My mum kept saying "you live HERE and you've never been?" and I didn't have a good answer.

Anyone else guilty of this? I feel like the tourists who come to Notting Hill genuinely know it better than I do at this point. Considering doing a proper month of only eating within a 10 min walk of my flat just to fix it, but part of me wonders if the appeal of London food is precisely that you get on a bus and go somewhere else.

Been in that phase where you're just applying and waiting, applying and waiting. Got a mail from Native Engineering about their data analyst program somewhere in between and honestly it landed at the right time. Data analyst roles especially, everyone wants experience but nobody wants to give you the first shot.

Had a free evening so joined the webinar anyway, wasn't planning to take it seriously.

Okay so the AI mock interview thing is actually something. Like it doesn't just give you generic feedback, it picks up on specific things you're doing wrong which is lowkey what I needed because I had no idea why my interviews weren't going well.

And the projects are real client work, not dummy stuff. So when someone asks you about your experience in an interview you actually have something to talk about properly.

Mentor support is there throughout which makes a difference honestly.

Still in the process but it's given me more direction than months of applying on my own did. Anyone else here trying to get into data analytics, how are you guys going about it?