Don’t worry about having a style

Your voice is not something you can control—it just comes out of you.¹ So don’t think or try too hard about having a style.² I remember the first time this anxiety crept up on me. I was a 13-year-old guitarist realizing I liked too many different genres to be willing to just camp out on one, and yet, the thought of synthesizing such disparate genres seemed incredibly daunting and even disingenuous (though 13-year-old-me didn’t use words like “daunting” and “disingenuous”—more like “poser” or “cheesy”).

!Originality, personality, or style can neither be encouraged nor prevented —Lou Harrison

!Artists; you do know, don’t you, that your mistakes are your style

Philip Glass talks about style and the hazards of it becoming a formula.

!The problem is getting rid of it —Philip Glass

Gary Panter says, “It will creep up on you and eventually you will have to undo it in order to go further.”³