How Do You Develop Your Musical Voice?

I once told vocalist Sheila Jordan how unique her singing was. She smiled and replied, "Why would I want to sing like somebody else? That's stealing their life. I have my own life to sing about."

I've thought about that conversation many times over the years because I think Sheila was exactly right.

Most musicians think developing a musical voice means becoming different. Sheila wasn't trying to be different or unique. She was simply singing her life instead of someone else's. That's a very different goal.

If you're learning to improvise, you may think developing your musical voice is something to worry about years from now. I don't think it works that way. Your musical voice develops every time you listen, practice, perform, and make musical decisions. It grows right alongside your musicianship.

It Begins with Listening

Think about the musicians you keep coming back to. Why those players? Why does one solo stay with you while another leaves you cold? Why does one phrase make you smile while another barely gets your attention?

Pay attention to those reactions. They'll tell you something about the musician you're becoming.

Your musical voice doesn't begin with trying to sound original. It begins with listening carefully enough to discover what actually moves you. Over time you'll notice certain sounds, rhythms, phrasing, and even approaches to improvisation consistently get your attention. Those are the sounds that become part of your musical vocabulary.

Your Voice Grows with Your Musicianship

Developing a musical voice isn't that different from learning to speak.

As a child, you had thoughts long before you had the vocabulary to express them. As your vocabulary grew, you didn't become a different person. You simply became better at communicating what you wanted to say.

Music works much the same way, but only up to a point.

As your ear develops, you begin hearing things you couldn't hear before. Better technique gives you more ways to express those ideas, and a deeper understanding of rhythm, harmony, and phrasing helps you shape them into music. As your musicianship grows, so does your musical voice.

That's one of the surprising things about becoming a better improviser. You're not just learning more scales or chords. As the connection between your ear and your instrument gets stronger, your own way of hearing music begins to come through your instrument more clearly.

That's why you can't really separate musicianship from musical voice. As one grows, so does the other.

Learn from Other Musicians

Every jazz musician learns from other musicians. You listen. You imitate. You transcribe. You borrow ideas. That's how you learn the language.

The mistake is thinking that's the destination.

I encourage students to transcribe Michael Brecker, learn Carl Fontana solos, and absorb the vocabulary of the great players. But that's a means to an end, not the end itself. The goal isn't to become the world's best Michael Brecker impersonator. It's to discover what you sound like after all those influences become part of you.

And then something changes. The ideas you've borrowed stop feeling borrowed. They begin mixing with your own musical experiences, tastes, and imagination until they simply become part of the way you hear and play music.

Your goal isn't to forget your influences. It's to absorb them so completely that they become part of your own musical language.

Watch: Finding Your Musical Voice

This idea is so important that I recorded an entire lesson about it for Improvisation Savvy. Watch it before you move on. It explains why learning from great players is essential—and why becoming one of them isn't the goal.

Let Your Ear Lead

One of the easiest ways to stall your musical growth is to let your fingers make musical decisions.

Every musician develops favorite patterns and familiar licks. There's nothing wrong with that until they start showing up simply because your fingers know where to go instead of because it's what you actually hear.

You've probably experienced this without realizing it. You're driving home after a gig, or you're lying in bed at night, and in your mind you hear yourself playing. Maybe it's a phrase. Maybe it's an entire solo. For a few moments you're not thinking about fingerings or scales. You're simply hearing music.

That's the connection you're trying to strengthen every time you practice.

Sometimes you'll play exactly what you imagined. Sometimes you won't. That's part of learning. Every attempt strengthens the connection between your ear and your instrument, making it a little easier for your playing to reflect what you actually hear instead of what your fingers already know.

Give It Time

Many musicians talk about "finding" their musical voice. I'm not sure that's the best way to think about it because I don't think you find it. I think you develop it.

Every recording you listen to, every performance you give, every mistake you learn from, and every musical problem you solve shapes the musician you're becoming. Five years from now you'll hear things differently than you do today, and your playing will reflect that growth.

The longer you play, the less interested you'll become in sounding like someone else. You'll still admire great musicians. You'll still borrow ideas. But little by little, those ideas become your own.

That's what I hear when I think back to Sheila Jordan's words:
"I have my own life to sing about."

What do you have to say?