Firstly I'm sorry to hear of your situation, but last year I was in a similar situation with similar events happening and often found the same thing with lack of creativity. So here are a few things I learnt during that time:

1. Don't force it. I was panicking that I wasn't making any good music, so threw more and more time at it, ended up frustrating myself more and losing even more creativity. When I stepped back, took the pressure of myself and began to enjoy making music again, the results improved massively. Don't sit and produce because you feel like you should or you need to. Wait until something inspires you, a song, a film, a concert, could be anything, but wait until that moment and then go and harness it.

2. Use music to help with the personal life. This might seem contrasting to the first point, but bury yourself in music and let it help take your mind off other things going on. You're unlikely to make any great progress with your production during this time, but as long as you don't expect to, you shouldn't get frustrated with it, and you can spend hours buried in a song, forgetting the outside world. Trust me, I spent a year pretty much locked in my room using producing as a way to help me through some stuff.

3. Patience. It will come. If you keep making music, you will keep improving and you will get good stuff made. Just stay patient and stick at it.

On the other hand you could say genres like future house are harder to make well and stand out, due to how easy it is to make something half decent with basic presets. Don't get me wrong, I think future house is very easy for people to make, but have mad respect for artists that stick at that sound but keep evolving it and keeping it fresh. People like Tchami who always seems to be one step ahead, some of his tracks may be deemed "easy" or "simple" on the whole but it can't be easy to keep evolving a style like he does.

Personally I think tropical house is one of the easiest, as it usually comprises of simple drum loops and one key melody, but again it can be hard to do very well.

From personal experience Future Bass can be very difficult. Vocal chops take a lot of time to get right and with the over-saturation of future bass right now, it is hard to keep your sound standing out. Me and my duo partner have tried to do this with orchestral elements, but I find that by far the hardest part of producing. It's not really a genre but trying to incorporate "real" sounds and instruments into electronic sounds can be very hard. But when done right has ridiculous results.

Easiest genres are simply those that have less elements, therefore the mix is easier and you can just rape a few presets / loops.
E.g 'future house' / Future bass / whatever the fuck people call it - can literally slam a drum groove and future bass preset patch in there and call it a day. And believe me I have seen / heard plenty of that going on. Mixing is easy due to the minimal amount of elements in the mix. Anybody can chuck in some drum loops and load up a bass preset.

Harder stuff is the stuff which have a lot of elements and layers / soundscapes. Take Progressive house (actual progressive house not 'EDM') or trance for example. Lots of layers, lots of soundscapes, lots of things to try fit in the mix, plus the actual melodic content you need to write - not just a few note bassline on a tube bass patch. Creating different soundscapes and ambiances within your track and then fitting them all together is the difficult part - and trying not to make it boring.

compare something timeless like some old Chicane stuff or even newer stuff like pryda / deadmau5 to some of this new 'deep house' (which isn't deep house) / trap / future bass etc and the complexity isn't comparable.

But no one gives a fuck how hard something is to make lol. Some of the most timeless records have sampled a disco track and slapped a drum groove under it. Sometimes the most simple of tracks are the best. Personally I have one Alias for more proggy / techno related stuff and another for simple house stuff - 909 drum grooves and basslines, nice and stripped back - usually when I'm at a wall with the more complex things I will mess around with that stuff.

I came across his remix of Renaissance a while ago and it's absolutely amazing. The tom fills are just next level, really trying to incorporate something like that in our tracks soon!

Another really cool future bass artist at the moment is Said The Sky, if you guys haven't you should check them out.

Thanks man appreciate that a lot!!

Big big fan of this! Intro is maybe slightly to long or needs something else, but that is the only small criticism I could think of. The rise sounds crisp and clean and the drop is very nice. Keep it up man!

Hey man, thanks for the reply! I thought it might be something like this, but had tried it and it still wouldn't work. However I have solved the problem now, I uninstalled FL Studio and re-installed it, this time leaving the default extra plugin folders in the installation, which I had changed to my custom ones in the previous installation. All working fine now but thanks again for your reply!

Hi guys,

I recently formed a duo called Steady State  & we have just released our first song. A melodic dubstep/future bass of You Hear Us by The Union.
Please let me know what you think!


Thanks,

Harwood

Wanna know what i find fishy? The fact that the person who won the hardwell contest already had a few tracks of his played out by hardwell, and one signed to his label. I've seen a few established artist claim that the remix contests are often rigged, which I have a feeling stays true with this contest.

I'm assuming you mean Olly James? He didn't win the Mad World one I believe that was an official remix, as the competition hasn't closed yet. But he did win one recently, Dannic one I believe, and he has had many songs supported by Hardwell so could well have had a nudge in that comp. I wouldn't say they are rigged, but the winners are often chosen on marketability not just music. They're more likely to choose someone like him because they've already got some influence & following in the industry, as opposed to a completely unknown artist. It's a shame really as talented artists may miss out from not having the exposure, but I guess the labels have to put themselves first primarily?