How do monsters find their voice!
Find - your - voice!
That's misleading advice during a creative journey. You already have to battle with your inner critic and perfectionism, and worrying about finding your VOICE can make this worse.
How are other creatives solving this inner issue? Here is where we need a great story!
Tom Morello, the Beethoven of rock and heavy metal, is one iconic musician whose sound and style inspired many young kids who wanted to play guitar.
Surprisingly, he didn’t start playing guitar until he was 17. In order to catch up, he began practicing an hour a day, shredding songs that he loved. It progressed to two hours, then four, then eventually eight hours a day for almost 10 years. Do the math! It’s crazy! Isn’t it? But hold on! That’s not the message. Continue reading!
In 1991, he joined Rage against the Machine, a bunch of talented extremists who sounded like no band before them. Their style was a strange and edgy mix of rap, alternative rock, metal, and was nuanced with messages of political activism between the lines.
That’s when, for the first time, Tom Morello felt like a real artist; and began to see his guitar as an instrument of innovation. It was here, after many years of practice, where he started to build a voice.
Through a mix of interviews, Morello describes this recognition;
"For years, I was amassing technique and becoming a very competent musician, but I really wasn't an artist. It really wasn't until the beginning of Rage Against the Machine, where I started looking at the guitar in a very different way … Recognizing that the electric guitar is a relatively new instrument on the planet. You can manipulate it in a lot of different ways. Once I had that revelation, I was off to the races. I was unconstrained by the conventions of whether it's Chuck Berry playing or Eddie Van Halen playing or whatever, and started making up my own vocabulary of sounds to build songs around."
So?
Don’t listen to mediocre “salesy” advice! “Find your voice” has never been a good idea. The process of finding an original voice is so complex that nobody can break it down into a formula to sell.
Morello is considered as one of the best guitarists in the history of rock music, but it took him 10 years to develop a unique sound. For you and me, it might take even longer. Your job is to stick to whatever drives you and do it with your heart.
Your Tweet of the day: Don’t search for your own voice. Find your thing, practice for thousands of hours, and your voice will follow.
Here is a short video version of this article for you!
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