It's hard to explain, but I feel like my voice changes song to song, and I feel like different people, and my beats always change, but I understand the sums of signals, and making things sound good, it's just hard to have something that makes me feel like I am consistent.

So when making like an album or an EP, I understand how to get the same loudness target across the board. but I guess I want to make sure that whatever I switch up to, it doesn't feel too drastic.

I am very emotional about my differences, and how I lack consistency, but If I had a checklist of what to check so things sort of "glue" together, that would help. I am looking for an abstract consistency if I switch to hyperpop to glitchcore to rock to trap. all the stuff just bends and it feels so weird hearing things back where "it all feels good" but it's just so different and hard to fit under one roof.

So my thoughts were a checklist. if it was always mentally in front of me, maybe I could stop having so much self-hate and anxiousness toward the differences. cause I really do like music and this is all I do outside of my job so. This is how I would feel better about what I do.

 

I don't have a checklist for you, but your dilemma really got me thinking...

As songwriters and performers, we all have varying degrees of emotional attachment to the varying degrees of music as a whole. Even though the music that we create may creep deep into our emotional state(s), the vast variety of little bits and pieces of music that moved us enough (consciously or unconsciously) to become musicians in the first place can oftentimes have a similar or even greater hold on our psyche. It is these bits and pieces that (I believe) we subconsciously attempt to recreate that makes up our 'style' or 'sound' and the more exposure we get to a seemingly ever growing variety of styles from around the globe, the more we mature as artists as those 'new' styles creep into our own.

With that being said, I also believe that every song has a life of it's own, sonically and emotionally. Some fly out of us and are wrapped up in less time than it takes to perform them, while others can take years to flesh out or never get completed at all. The one thing that remains consistent throughout this entire process is that we become more focused and possibly more deliberate in our songwriting where earlier compositions were more fragmented.

When we find our focus narrowing and our inconsistencies becoming consistent, we can then ascertain that we are successfully developing our own 'style' or 'sound'. In my mind a lack of consistency goes hand in hand with a lack of an original style or sound, and it is these seemingly fragmented pieces that contain the 'glue' that you are searching for.

My advice is keep writing, keep feeling those emotions, and keep doing the songs the way you see them being done today. Some songs will stick with you, changing as you change, and some seemingly impossible to complete.

Until you do.

Your post made one singer / songwriter pop into my head immediately as the songs on their first few albums were so fragmented that some could mistake them as a showcase of separate artists that share a recording label or geographical location. As they churned out release after release, you can hear them perfecting their signature sound, but kept the diverse nature of the individual songs on each successive release until the end.

That would be the late great Freddy Mercury and the legendary band Queen

 

This is a very kind and helpful addition I believe, for me, and hopefully the original author. I don't have much to add, other than, I don't believe there is a right or wrong way to do something that is authentic from you. Neither is it wrong or right to critique yourself, but all in all, I Just hope at the end of the day, you won't be too hard on yourself to not smile, sometimes I'll smile at myself for the errors, farts, quips blips and burps, laughing at myself tends to remind the soul of its impermanence and free of importance. Take care

 

@pcdocstl left an excellent reply. To add to it, here are my thoughts:

That’s the thing about the prevalence of streaming songs. We’re exposed to so much and we’re able to dip our toes in almost any genre we want to, expanding our tastes much more than it was possible before. This becomes an issue when you are trying to make a coherent sound, something that I personally faced as well. At this point, perhaps, you are simply just finding your sound. It took me years but I can safely say that I have a unique identity in all the music I make. From the lyrical content, melodies, and style of production, even if I fuse multiple genre ideas, it is simply me. That is my glue. It doesn’t hurt to get feedback as well. I like to host listening parties and I can sort of gauge an audience response from there too.

Keep experimenting and learning and eventually, you will land on something you’ll stick to, but even then, we’re constantly changing and evolving ourselves. Best to finish the project as soon as you can with the mindset you have now before you start delaying and forgetting what the main objective was for your EP/Album when you started the project. Having a clear over-arching idea, sonically and lyrically will help “glue” and influence decisions that will glue all your individual ideas together. I don’t have a checklist for you either as I do not know you or your project. Do what SOUNDS GOOD to you first, because a good song is a good song. And in our era, singles are king. And though I say that, I am not implying albums aren’t important but perhaps, the scope may be too overwhelming at this point as you’re still exploring yourself.

A checklist I would have would focus more on finishing projects rather than worrying about “glue”. Something like; production at 12 pm, or songwriting/recording every evening, etc. Purely focusing on OUTCOMES. The only technical checklists would simply be:

Do you want a balanced-sounding track? - mix
Do you want a consistent listening experience? - master
Vocal performance sound bad? - re-record

Beyond that, just keep going. You can ALWAYS remove or add songs to your EP/Album. You can always go back to edit them if something really bothers you in the production/mix. You have total creative control. Have fun with it. Once you have material you have the luxury to pick and choose.

If you really need validation share your music with your good friends/family and see if they like it. It can help you overcome your self-hate/anxiousness as then you’ll realize that if it doesn’t bother them, it shouldn’t bother you. Until you put yourself out there, no one is judging you but you, and we’re already extremely critical of ourselves - it’s important to not fall into that trap.