your Body Knows what Your Music SHould Sound LIke
A somatic approach to discovering your sonic identity
I have a secret fantasy that one day aliens will come to earth, bringing technology to extract the pristine, exquisite song that resides in each of our bodies, longing to be expressed.
Imagine taking a person—maybe even someone you struggle to understand—placing them into this cosmic machine, and out comes a sonic weaving that pierces through rational thought. It speaks from their heart to yours, a cord of connection, a rope of human relatedness. Imagine the big scoops of pure heart, unencumbered by the cultural conditioning that tells us we should keep the sounds inside.
It would be wild. Profound. It could end war.
In the meantime, until those flying saucers arrive, we earthlings must either leave the musical signature that resides inside the other a mystery, or labor to bring our sonic expressions to life. This usually means collaborating with other humans, navigating the intersection of time, money, communication, and studio pressure.
For self-funding, self-releasing artists, this pressure intensifies. Yet we have something signed artists often don't: complete creative freedom. No built-in advisors can be liberating or terrifying, depending on the situation.
The Double-Edged Sword of Independence
Sometimes a label champion truly understands an artist's vision and fights for it. But more often, they push what's good for the label, not the artist. Samantha Crane told Marc Maron how getting signed to an Americana label initially felt like a win, but ultimately held her back artistically—they wanted her to stay in the Americana lane even as she grew beyond it.
The horror stories of soul-crushing mismanagement are practically status quo. Finding examples of artists who felt their label treated them with freedom, support, and care is rare.
But having no guidance can feel overwhelming too. Songwriter, engineer, producer, mastering, distribution, legal, marketing, social media, touring, merch, websites, email lists... It's far more than reasonable to ask one person to do well.
If you're planning to self-release, finding strategies for advisement, structure, and feedback is as crucial as understanding your artistic vision. Before marketing your music, you must make it—and make it exceptional.
You Don't Need to Be a "Musician" to Do This
Before we dive in, let's clear something up for those who might be thinking, "But I'm not a musician."
Says who?
Recently, I attended a concert where Rhiannon Giddons reminded the audience that before music was recorded, before it was a profession, it was how communities processed life together. Music was functional.
For most of human history, there was no such thing as a "non-musician." Our ancestors—across virtually every culture on earth—wove song into the fabric of daily life. There were wedding songs and funeral songs, working songs and lullabies, songs for planting and harvesting, for celebration and mourning. Everyone participated. The baker sang, the farmer sang, the elder sang, the child sang.
At our core—just like in that alien song machine fantasy—we still carry this musical birthright. Every human has an inner receiver, a compass that knows what moves them, what makes their pulse quicken, what moves their body. This information is invaluable, whether you're heading into a studio or simply wanting to understand yourself more deeply.
I talk with people all the time who say they "aren't musical," but when I dig deeper, they're humming in the car, strumming a guitar in their bedroom, tapping out rhythms on their steering wheel, or singing in the shower. They just don't think they're "good enough" for it to count.
That, my friends, is cultural programming—the idea that music belongs only to the "talented few." But your relationship with sound, your preferences, your physical responses to music? That's your ancestral birthright. This exercise might just help you reclaim that part of yourself and discover things about your inner landscape you never knew were there.
The Maths Aren’t Mathing
Whether you're planning to work with a producer or just want to understand your sonic preferences more deeply, there's a common assumption that needs addressing. Many people think finding the right collaborator and showing up with songs equals automatic musical alchemy.
Songs + producer = album, right?
That math works on some level, but what you'll actually get is that producer's interpretation of what they think you want, filtered through their own aesthetic and experience.
Every decision matters: the studio, microphones, drum style, bass, plugins, mixing choices, vocal takes. It all adds up to a perspective—and if that perspective isn't aligned with yours, you might walk away with something that technically sounds good but doesn't feel like you.
Getting your perspective in sync before hitting record is going to help you bring your sonic vision to life. This exercise will help you clarify who you are sonically, which can be used to communicate that inspiration effectively if you are working with a producer.
Somatic Cornerstone Playlists
Often producers will ask you to give them a reference reel — a playlist of songs that can be used as reference for your album. But how to fill this reel is left entirely up to you as the artist — and it can feel like an overwhelming, stumping task to create a playlist. Are you filling it with tracks you love? Your inspiration? Influences? Or specific sounds you want to replicate? Classics within your genre?
This exercise has you break down your reels into a few key playlists, and one special one — and we use a somatic framework (similar to the one we used in finding your Sonic Influence)—your body becomes your guide, not your mind. We use other people’s music as the language, and your somatic sensations as the filter. As you listen, scan for:
Expansion: Opening, breathing deeper, chest or belly expanding, energy moving outward, a spreading sense of "yes" or aliveness.
Contraction: Closing, tightening, pulling inward, chest or throat constricting, energy drawing back, a protective "no" or bracing.
Numbness: Nothing—flatness, disconnection, like cotton between you and your feelings. Numbness might seem unwanted, but it often protects parts of ourselves that are overwhelmed. If you're feeling numb or dissociated, something massive, iceberg-ish, might be lurking beneath the surface.
On your preferred platform, create 3-5 playlists simultaneously for your Sonic Cornerstones (choose whatever cornerstones make sense for your music, for example):
Drum Inspiration
Vocal Mixing Styles/Runs/Inspiration
Soundscapes
Guitar Treatments / Guitar Solos
Piano Tones
Bass Grooves
Innovative Sampling
Not Sure Why I'm Obsessed (this one's essential)
That last playlist might be the most important. Some songs have an ineffable quality—you're not even sure why you love them. There's something unreachable by words, something that bypasses your rational mind entirely. You might not be able to pinpoint the "thing" about it that you love—is it the guitar? Or the mix? Or the lyrics? What is it?
These tracks might be your most powerful tool, and perhaps the most vulnerable thing you can share with a producer. When you play them a song and say "I have no idea why this stops me in my tracks, but it does"—that's where the real transformation lives. That's the territory beyond technique, beyond genre, beyond explanation. It's pure feeling, and it's uniquely yours.
A good producer will receive this like pure gold, because it will tell them more about the inner terrain of your heart and sonic mind than any attempt at a verbal genre mash-up ever could.
The other playlists might have specific sounds that you would like to consider including in a specific song, a treatment that you love, a vocal mix style that you know will sound amazing on a particular song.
How It Works
Listen as you normally would, but stay alert for these categories. When something lights you up, drop it in. Notice moments when your curiosity peaks, your heart thumps, your throat tightens, a tear forms, your scalp tingles, you want to dance or scream or bang along, you think "damn, I wish I wrote that."
Feel it with your body, not your mind. There's a huge difference between "I know this is a technically awesome guitar solo" and "This guitar makes me want to dance/cry/scream."
Drop in songs with something—even just a moment—that captures your sonic imagination. It doesn't need to be "I want my music to sound like this." Share what attracts you, what stops your ear in its tracks, what makes you curious, what makes your heart do loop-de-loops.
Finding Your Patterns
As playlists build, look for patterns. When I reviewed my drum inspiration, I noticed tom-heavy moments that reminded me of throbbing heartbeats, plus wonky, irregular elements—what my friend Sasha from Fieldress described as "the sound of a tennis ball in the dryer." Something weird that made me pay attention. I also love West African drumming.
Three pieces of information to guide my studio conversations. When my producer suggests "a little 4 on the floor," I can confidently say no.
Beyond Cut + Paste
These aren't meant as a collage for your producer to cut-and-paste into your sound. They're a common reference, a sonic language grounded beyond words—something felt in the body, ear, and heart. They help generate new ideas together, originating from your unique receiver.
You synthesize all the beauty you love, process it through your body, and out spills... your music. A totally new thing.
Take your time building these playlists. Let them percolate over weeks or months if you have the luxury. This isn't weekend homework—it's cultivation.
As you listen, stay in your body. If you have to convince yourself intellectually about a song, it likely doesn't belong. Trust that there may even be tracks that make zero sense on paper but hit you emotionally—that salience is what you you are after.
Until The Mothership Arrives
Whether you're heading into a studio or simply exploring your relationship with sound, sonic clarity deepens your connection to music and to yourself.
For those pursuing music professionally, you'll still need to navigate all those other elements—mastering, distribution, marketing, social media, touring. But for anyone on this journey, when you start from a place of understanding what truly moves you, when you've done the deep work of recognizing your unique sonic fingerprint, everything else becomes more authentic and aligned.
The alien song machine remains a fantasy for now. But maybe the real magic isn't in some future technology that extracts our songs effortlessly—maybe it's in this very human process of listening deeply, feeling fully, and finding ways to translate the untranslatable into sound that connects us heart to heart.
Whether that connection happens in a recording studio, your living room, or simply in the privacy of your own headphones, you're reclaiming something that's always been yours.
