Too much influence?

[Jay Pace]

Copying is just a derogratory way of interpreting influence.

Any work could be praised for being influenced by X or slated for being an attempt to copy X. Comes down to whoever is doing the copying/influencing in the first place. If they set out to copy its a copy. If they set out to do something and ended up making what sounded like a copy its influence. A question of intent, and totally subjective and dependent on the listeners interpretation of the artists work.

Starting out, being young you have limited experience and influence. You haven't seen that many people play live, you've listened to a certain amount of albums and you haven't seen scenes rise and fall. So if you get into a new sound, which is defined to you by Mr X and Mr Y and you start making stuff its hardly your fault if it ends up sounding like a cross between Mr X and Mr Y. Sure, some artists emerge from nowhere and become the musical zeitgeist but this is the exception rather than the norm.

I'd say you need to keep your potential pool of influencers as broad as possible, this will make your music personal and unique to you - your output being the sum of your influences + whatever else goes into your creativity and output.

That said I think even people with very limited listening repetoire can produce incredibly original stuff. Some people are just very creative that way. Personally I don't think I am, I'm more reliant on my influences. So depends on the person.