hmmm....
develop your personal style? i think there are two (there probably are more) approaches-
1. listen to everything.
by increasing your musical intake you are bound to absorb things. listen, learn what you like and dont like, make it second nature, then dismantle it. its kinda like buying a second hand car, then pimping it up to make it personal. sometimes, it somes out like either like an enhanced version of that old corolla, sometimes its torn down to its bare necessities... in extreme cases it no longer resembles the car it used to be! now, that's making it personal.
the key word is PERSONAL. make it yours by making your mark on it like a cat marks its territory by pissing. its yours when you start doing things to it that may or may not have been done to it before. dont piss on your instrument. it'll stink and piss sucks tone.
2. forget about everything.
this is my favorite one. throw all that you know outside the window and let your instincts guide you. start hating EVERYTHING you love about the genre, start knit-picking on the things that you find/hear everybody to be doing the same, and eliminating it from your playing. that puts your brain in a different creative trajectory, coz you are no longer adapting or assimilating, but creating.
this makes sense, as one of music's prime goals for musicality is to find your space in the music by doing what cannot be found in it, but filling what is lacking to improve on it, or removing what shouldn't be there. i like this approach better, but it is alot harder to nail because it is the most personal. you have to deny your musical gods and dig deeper to find the truth within.
