Some years ago, I spent time playing with a multi-piece funk band which I thoroughly enjoyed because funk doesn't depend so much on scales and long melodic lines as it does on rhythm and (sometimes aggressive and oddball) tone and texture. At one point, a 2 night gig with this band was taped.

As it happens, the singer and the guitarist with the band took the tapes over to Vancouver (I live on Vancouver Island). I knew nothing about this. They played the tape for their friends, not mentioning at any time who was in the band.

A few minutes into the tape, one of their friends exclaimed "that harp sure sounds like Ron Good" after which the other friend quickly and emphatically agreed--much to the shock of my band-mate in the funk band, who answered, "well...uh...it is Ron!"

My point is this: I didn't know my funk band-mates knew Jan and Jamie. Jan and Jamie didn't know I was playing with--or even knew--their friends on the Island, and Jan and Jamie had last heard me playing with them over 10 years previous in a country-folk outfit in Montreal :-) 

Something about my personal style transcended 10 years, a whole whack of practice and intervening influences and the great stylistic differences between funk and cow-folk.

Story over...

Guitar players, keyboard players, you probably--in fact, all sorts of people who play or listen to a lot of music--can spot certain players after only a few moments hearing them, even if they've never heard the tune before and/or they're listening in entirely different surroundings, whether they're listening to a CD on a hot stereo or a poor tape on a $60 blaster. That's personal style.

When I think of personal style on harp, I immediately think of Lee Oskar and his distinctive horn-like throat vibrato and phrasing--or Mickey Raphael with Willie Nelson, who often has a very unique almost choral tone to his playing, or Mark Ford, or Paul Delay, or Sugar Blue.

Evidently what Jan and Jamie recognized (I asked) was something about the fact that my single notes are very precise, pretty much regardless of speed--I've always preferred pure single tones to slurry single notes with hints of adjoining tones, no matter how distorted the original tone. And there are "slurry" players I like to listen to--I just don't like to play like that. It ain't me.

So, after much thought, and lots and lots of listening, I've come to the conclusion that personal style is maybe unavoidable and that the wish to "sound like so-and-so" is somewhat futile. Every player--to start with--has a different mouth, different diaphragm, different natural vibrato, throat musculature, a more or less agile tongue, and very certainly a unique sense of "taste". Some guys spend more time listening and practicing the old Delta (and somewhat later) Piedmont blues folks and their stylistic progeny, while some others (me, for instance) spend more time learning chops from the Mid-60's Brits and new players players like Mark Ford or Dennis Gruenling. And there are lotsa folks who listen and asssimilate from completely different sources.

Which boils down to this:

Don't worry about developing a personal style.

YOU ALREADY HAVE ONE. YOU CAN'T HELP IT.