I spend a lot of time coming up with ways to get my students to short circuit their ingrained habits as musicians, and find new approaches to their music. One of the games I play with them is something I call 'channeling'; it's simply thinking 'what would X musician play if they were on this track?'.

The idea behind the exercise is best summed up in a phrase "Plagiarism is harder than you think" (a phrase I almost certainly stole from somewhere else, but can't find to attribute just now...)

A lot of creative people become obsessed with the danger of becoming overly-influenced by other people in their field. It largely seems to be based on the (wrong) assumption that aware people can suddenly find themselves ripping their peers off accidentally, just by being aware of what they do.

The truth is, if you're aware enough to be worried about possibly copying someone else, it's not going to happen without you trying pretty hard. Personal style, as expressed in the work of people who are experts in their field, takes YEARS to develop, consciously or unconsciously. It very rarely appears accidentally.

So after acknowledging this, we can use our incomplete awareness of someone else's approach to jolt our brains out of the repetitive cycles we get caught in whilst thinking about things from our own perspective, and instead 'channel' their approach. The result is a mash-up of your style, their style and a whole load of serendipitous chance happening that is often better than a sum of its parts.

For my bass students, it often just involves switching up their technique, or approaching a particular line from a different rhythmic or melodic angle. The principle is easily applied to any area of creative endeavor, from writing to film-making, designing to creative planning.

I used a similar approach when I started writing for Bassist Magazine, back in the late 90s. I picked a selection of articles from the back issues, and looked at how they were written - how long was the intro? How did they format questions and answers? Did the writer ever refer to themself? I collected together an informal 'style-file' that I used as a basis for my own first few articles. I didn't end up writing like any other particular writer, it just allowed me to frame my own writing in a way that fit the style of the magazine.

Long term, the best results are to be had by combining a range of influences with your own discoveries. Rely too much on your own intuition and you just end up making the same mistakes as everyone else. Obsess over one influence, and you're in danger of becoming a tribute act... The 'channeling' game is a way of allowing small snippets of influence to sneak in, without you turning into a stalker.

What areas of your own work do you feel stuck in a rut in? Could you benefit from a little outside influence? You might like to try this as an experiment.