Finding Your Voice Through Imitation
Why copying others can be the most original thing you do.
Hey—It’s Matthew from BeatsbyVanityTV.
Estimated read time: 1 minute, 16 seconds.
Artists learn through imitation.
They mimic the masters. Not to replicate, but to internalise. To build fluency in a language they didn’t invent.
At first, this feels discouraging. We look at the work of the masters and feel the weight of the gap. That space between our taste and our ability. We know what we’re hearing isn’t right. But we don’t yet know how to fix it.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” - Ira Glass
When I started producing music, I studied the artists I admired. Reverse-engineering their tracks in obsessive detail.
Not just copying—understanding. Attempting to see the world through their lens.
Eventually, I took the process online. I thought if imitation helped me, maybe it could help others too.
So I made videos breaking down the sound of different artists. Creating original tracks that felt like theirs. Or, that was the goal.
But after a few of these, something shifted.
The more I worked in other people’s styles, the more I found myself pushing against them. Maybe the drums didn’t hit how I liked. Or the arrangements felt too dense. I started tweaking. Adjusting. Making choices that felt more like mine.
And that’s when I realised: those instincts were my voice. They weren’t accidents or errors—they were preferences.
That tension—between imitation and deviation—is where a voice began to emerge.
By identifying what didn’t feel right, I was uncovering what did.
That’s the quiet truth of imitation. You follow long enough to find the point where you naturally diverge. And that divergence? That’s where you start to sound like yourself.
See you next Thursday,
—Matthew