title. what are your favorite songs with key changes in em? what are some songwriting tricks to set them up?

inspired by the like five bazillion changes in beyonce's love on top.

its not danceable at all but this billain song has no kick and is inSANE. anyway. there definitely are moments in shows when breaks can work very well, and sometimes not dancing is necessary. sets from dutch house artists in 2013 that had ZERO breakdowns or pauses were honestly exhausting, and not in a good way haha.

i think i'd keep in mind that you were at EDC. sets at festivals are just /going/ to be more dance-oriented most of the time imo, especially at one as geared towards EDM as that (not as a dig). i think that for a lot of DJ's there's pressure to play stuff that people outside their fanbase will like at festivals vs goin on tour. personally, i dont think u should let it get to you. so many of the most meaningful moments in music to me are the emotions evoked through absence, and i think that losing out on that is too bad. make music that's you.

i use FL so i cant speak on ableton. but FL comes with some really powerful synths built in. if you can learn 3xosc, you can learn any subtractive synth. harmor and sytrus are MONSTERS, ive barely scratched the surface of them. some of the effects aren't amazing (i avoid the fruity reverbs lately), they're very good tools to learn on. so i would start there; that applies to any DAW, u can learn just as much with ableton's stock stuff.

almost every plugin has a manual to go with it (and FL has it's own online!). find it, read through it, read through it again when ur uninspired. learning what the knobs do, how they affect sounds, will honestly help you SO much more than any of the millions of How Too Scrillex Bas's tutorials. i spent way too long watching SeamlessR (who is good!) and learned wayy to little from it by comparison to messing around and making stupid sounds.

anyhoo. to be less preachy, here are the plugins i've been using lately! i make pretty, glitchy distortion-y stuff if that helps.
3xosc
sylenth1 (90% of the time)
massive sometimes
ott
valhalla reverbs
all the fruity compressor/stereo shaper/etc stuff is good
ESPECIALLY fruity waveshaper and granulizer
TAL-bitcrusher

i agree with what lydian said. learn about harmony and music theory in general, and you'll be able to figure out what it is you like about the songs you like.

to that end, here are some thoughts re: the examples you gave, because ive never analyzed music before and i wanna try it haha. lydian please come thru and wreck me, ur way better at this.

the paul van dyk song. the song is in B minor. or Dmajor.
the first time around the chords go roughly Bmin-Amaj-Gmaj-Amaj (vi-V-IV-V), then Bmin-Amaj-Gmaj-Emin (vi-V-IV-ii). all of the notes played so far fall into the scale of Bminor, so they "make sense" to ur ears. the second time around it plays the vi-V-IV-V as normal, but then it drops down to E and hits what's called a 'Sustained Chord.' instead of being the Eminor chord you'd expect (E/G/B), the middle note is raised a whole note, so it's (E/A/B). this gives it a feeling of tension, that then is capitalized on when that A goes down to a G#, making an Emajor chord. this feels out of place, because normally that should be a minor chord, but it still sounds good. that's called a 'Borrowed Chord.'

the sean tyas song is actually very similar in that it has that ii chord sustained, but it's a little bit more ambiguous because there's less notes going on.

the indecent noise remix. key of Cminor (or Eb major). its' pretty simple, the main plucky melody isnt doing a whole lot but has a delay on it, so it sounds like more notes. the chords are Cmin-A#maj-G#-maj-Fmin (vi-V-IV-ii). the chords are held for a relatively long time, which makes each chord change feel more "impactful," and theyre all descending towards the I (E flat), which gives it sort of an epic feeling.

so stuff like that you can kinda learn about and then you can identify them in songs u like, and then implement them in ur own ways. good luck!

no,

i agree with your last point, marrow. ive been thinking a lot about this lately. at its heart, i think this addresses a broader question of originality, beyond just sample packs.

first of all, this isn't just a thing in music, it happens in every medium. i go to school for graphic design, and my classmates complain a lot about how things like Weebly and Squarespace are supposedly killing web design. they argue that these website templates dumb down design and take clients away from "real designers," but i'm not sure i buy that 100%.
every time an art form gets pushed forward, people copy what's popular. if it wasn't future bass dudes and cymatics, it would be something else. like, how many businesses in the 1960's opted for the EXACT same Swiss-style branding? enough that Helvetica is prevalent enough to literally make a movie about it, for better and worse. or, how many producers were downloading presets to emulate Scary Monsters in 2011? a lot, but in the meantime skrillex has moved on, and that sound has gotten totally played out.
as for them literally stealing+selling sounds, they should probably get slapped with a hot lawsuit, but i think that isn't what ur talking about. there will always be others who take shortcuts, but chasing the flavor of the month only gets you so far. the more time you spend chasing someone else's 'wave', the harder and harder it gets to make your own, yknow?

tl;dr - be genuine, make music you care about, and try to inspire other people to do the same.

p.s. if u want to get more involved, come join us in the slack chat!

THATS RIGHT IM IN IT

also more people pls enter this week