I use www.dancemusicproduction.com. Helped me out so much.

You could try using some counterplay of your main melody for the breakdown...or do really atmospherical pads and short stabs of your main melody bringing it in slowly with filtering...

That is a tricky question. Direct line, not against the wall. With bass traps and some sound treatment if possible. I found this quickly and it seems to explain things that have been explained to me fairly well. http://ehomerecordingstudio.com/acoustic-treatment-101/

My one main goal this year is to get my first track signed by this summer.

Splice is pretty awesome. Small payment to download whatever samples you so desire. I have the KSHMR sample pack, I use it on pretty much every track. Also Nicky Romero's kick is pretty awesome; you can tune kicks and upload your own top click samples. I layer that up with another kick sample usually.

I like massive, I've re-created some movie soundtrack sounds with that. Trying to incorporate different elements from other area of music into my work

For me I was doing a remix contest for trance label Black Sunset. I thought why not try it out. I sent an unfinished track to a few buddies, one guy I especially look up too. He told me that he thought I really had something going and that I should pursue this sound more. I've done progressive house, mel bounce, deep house and some trap(ish) stuff. I felt elated at this encouragement. I immediately had that wonderful emotional connection with the music and I just knew I needed to keep making music like that. It's like all the music I was making took me on a journey to what I was meant to be making. All the experience I had all came together in that moment. I now consider myself a trance producer. Most of my melody work is uplifting and my basslines are fast rolling.    Cool question.

Repeat topic here, my post in the other thread:

I think the difference is that an original is completely open to you to be as creative as possible as an artist. For a remix, I believe it is about also being creative but also about capturing your take on the original artist's message. For me it usually is following a similar chord progression and doing a new melody. I also find myself gravitating towards strong lyrical tracks.

A very popular track is GTA - Red Lips the original and the Skrillex remix. I took the track and did a MelBounce style, a completely different take on a trap/dubstep track. I incorporated the essence of the original message by including a trap break 3/4 of the way through.