Think about it. I have this vocal I wanna post process. I'm gonna be compressing it, putting saturation on it, sending it through a reverb, and in the end it's all gonna get squashed through my mastering chain. If I start adding frequencies that were not originally present, what do you think might happen when it starts going through all these effects?

That's a whole lot of assumptions right there, and what you said has nothing to do with what Marrow said. And as you said yourself, you can control the output gain inside the EQ, so the whole additive vs subtractive dichotomy is useless. Also to clear up possible confusion: EQ does not add any frequencies that were not present in the original signal.

Yes. I'm actually surprised how prevalent vacuum tube amps still are.

In FL just make sure you're using the "e3 generic" mode, you can do this in Edison, but I prefer to just double-click the sample on the playlist and adjust the pitch from the properties window.

Another trick that I learned a while ago, applies to snares also: if you drop the pitch of the sample and find that the transient loses its punchiness, add a downwards pitch envelope to the beginning of the sample. In FL you can use the "pogo" knob, or the pitch env in sampler for more control.

Money's easy

I wish all the poor people in the world, and all those living on minimum wage would read this forum.

I'm kind of indifferent on this topic... But to be honest, there are many artists I'd be happy to write music for. The benefit for the songwriters is that they get to do the fun part of the work - making music - without having to deal with the publicity and touring and bitches and... wait. Maybe it's enough credit for them to get hired again, i.e. to be respected by their colleagues in the music industry, instead of being recognized by Beliebers?

What I'm curious about, though, is that how do ten people write a track together? And then six people produce it. What do all those people do? I'll answer the latter part of my question with this video from an Avicii livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEcq4sXN7jQ

I'm with myda on this one, the comparison to EQ and compression makes the most sense in the layering context... It also applies to making e.g. the kick and the snare work together so that their transients don't cancel each other out. This video seems to explain it pretty thoroughly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0at8xuPKfU

But both the timing and the decay time (or note duration for non-percussive instruments) are super important for groove. A related concept in music theory is articulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulation_(music) . A nice example is this Zedd bassline where most of the groove comes from the varying note durations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqJiXLJs_Pg&feature=youtu.be&t=94

Arcturus - The Sham Mirrors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0o7Vx0bmno

Avant-garde sci-fi metal. Haven't heard anything comparable to date.

Very well-produced stuff, I get a Zedd vibe. Might just grab this to reference my tracks against!