Always crashing in the same car

Some thoughts on plagiarising myself

While chatting with a friend he pointed out that he was enjoying the 'evolution of the idea' occurring between three of my (fairly) recent songs. This came as something of a surprise as I'd not consciously set out to do anything like this, so when I got home I set up a playlist of the tunes in question and sat down to listen.

Ebb
Remembrance
Remnant

On the first run through it was clear that there was a common thread running through the pieces but it was hard to put my finger on exactly what that was. Subsequent listenings muddied the water even further, sometimes they sounded like elements in a suite, sometimes they felt completely divorced from each other (I regularly have wildly differing responses when reviewing my own work) so I decided to dig deeper and see if I could discover the missing link.

On a technical level there were several common elements. All of the songs had a slow(-ish) tempo and featured a (mostly) descending pattern that repeated before a 'turnaround' phrase at the end of the verse. Each had a middle eight in a different key that modulated fairly sharply back into a reprise of the verse. The melodies were similar but more in feel than in the actual notes, each had its own internal progression in the song but didn't seem to directly reference any of the others. There was a common air of wistful reminiscence but without the melancholy or nostalgia that so often pops up in my music.

There were shared elements in the instrumentation & arrangements too. Although all of the tones were clearly synthesized they often suggested more traditional instruments - a glockenspiel/pub piano for the main melody, horns, strings, & voices in the accompaniment, pipe organ in there too. Although each tone is built from scratch as I construct a piece it seems like there are familiar paths that I'm drawn back to time & time again. Or maybe these are well-established complimentary timbres that we all absorb as part of our musical environment & heritage? It's an interesting question. The end result was that all three pieces had some similarity in their instrumentation but not quite enough to feel like retreads of the same idea.

My Imposter Syndrome immediately put forward an explanation - I'd only really had around half a dozen original musical ideas and had been merely redressing them in different guises over the years. This felt a little harsh, even for my powerful self-doubt, and although some delving into my back catalogue seemed to suggest I wasn't just a [small number]-trick pony it did bring up some dubious traits I'd observed in my creative process, notably a tendency to let ideas linger in my (sub)conscious after completing a song.

I normally have just a single project on the go at any one time and will usually start on a new one straight after wrapping up the old one. Having been immersed in a piece quite intensively as it approaches completion it's no surprise that the components remain on my creative palette, especially if there's an alternative option that I'd considered but not used. But I felt I'd gotten pretty good at spotting this and avoiding the temptation to re-make/re-model something straight away. And these tracks had not been composed in direct sequence, they were all from different albums and not even consecutive ones.

Another explanation was that this was simply a consequence of my personal style and creative process. My standard operating procedure is to begin with a simple phrase or riff, develop that out into a song structure (usually a verse/chorus/middle eight form), and then fill in the gaps, adding melodic and/or harmonic elements as the shape of the piece starts to emerge. I rarely have an end point in mind until well into the process and inspiration, (dis)satisfaction, mistakes, etc. can easily reset the direction I end up pursuing. So it would be no great surprise that this haphazard route map could easily reveal my subconscious preferences as I dowse towards a conclusion. They sound similar because that's what I like? It has a ring of plausibility to it.

My investigation had led from the crime scene to a likely suspect (The subconscious, in the studio, with the MIDI sequencer) but where was the motive?

When I returned to creating synthesizer music in my late 50s the primary objective was to rediscover the joy in composing & playing that I'd had in my younger years. Once I'd progressed to releasing my compositions into the great wide world there was a faint but persistent hope that I'd discover an adoring/receptive/mildly interested audience with similar (and clearly highly refined) tastes but as the years rolled by and listening figures rarely stretched beyond double figures it seemed like I was mostly making music for myself. This has become somewhat self-fulfilling as I indulge myself in the fun parts of composition & arrangement while neglecting the (less fun) polishing & refining tasks that might make these tracks more appealing to the casual listener.

(Every now & again I ponder over whether to go back and remix at least part of my back catalogue to fix some of the most obvious flaws. We'll see.)

Beyond tailoring my output to a one-man demographic I think there's a deeper pull, my focus is more on the process of creating music than the actual end product [ptui!]. I'm not oblivious to the quality of my creations (and future me is a discerning, if forgiving critic) but letting myself be guided by the whims & peccadillos of my inner voice(s) is where most of the fun is to be found. The fact that these (more) primal impulses might shed some light on how I present myself to the world, illuminate some of my inner processes, and reveal some persistent traits shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Making music is intensely personal but having to balance your individual expression against external constraints like scales, melody, harmony, etc. demands all sorts of decision making and reveals how you interact with the world rather than simply who you are.

And focussing on the process can lead to a nice, big pile of results. Maybe it's simply a statistical quirk that after producing so many tracks there are bound to be recognisably common elements between some of them. It's actually quite encouraging to think that ideas can evolve within my body of work and realise it's OK to not relentlessly search for novelty in every new piece. I shall continue to try and winkle out why some tracks seem related and where some of the influences originate but with a sense of spirited curiosity rather than defensiveness. Wish me luck!

June 2026