Imitation is the backbone of creativity

When I was at Berklee College of Music, my first semester music theory teacher gave us an assignment to write a piece of music using ideas from existing music. He gave us a choice of jazz standards and we had to take the chord progression of one and a piece of the melody from another. Those were our materials to start with. Then we had to write a piece of music.

I had another assignment to listen to Leia’s Theme by John Williams and write a piece of music that sounds similar; a sound-alike. These are super common in film music because film editors and directors will often put in temporary music, or temp music, while editing together a film. So the composer sometimes might have to write a sound-alike; a piece of music that’s unique and new, but sounds similar to an already existing piece of music.

Both of those assignments started with imitating other pieces of music. The first one was very direct. I took the chord progression from one song and a melodic fragment from the other. The finished piece didn’t sound anything like either of the two I took from, but those two pieces were the starting point.

The opposite is true of the second assignment. My piece sounded and felt very similar to Leia’s Theme. It wasn’t the same musical material, but it was expressing the same emotion and idea.

Doing this when you’re stuck can help a lot. Use a song you like and imitate it.

My song “Caffeinated” that came out a few weeks ago was inspired by EDit and Glitch Mob. I took ideas from them and wanted to make my own music with those ideas. Mainly the heavy bass drum and fast glitch sounds.

I was imitating them and using that imitation as a jumping off point to make my own art.

Imitation can give you a push or a start to creating some music. Use it. Don’t copy exactly what someone else wrote, but imitate them. Take a chord progression, or a fragment of a melody, or a word. Put it into your own music and see what you can make with it.

Imitation is the backbone of creativity.

ISJ