Another thing I still do to this day is I take a track that I really like the arrangement of and just mimic their drums.  I build a skeleton to work on and I slowly add parts on top of that.  Eventually the track takes on a life of its own and I start editing the arrangement until it no longer resembles the track I'm copying.  This is just a great way to get over that "hump" of being stuck staring at the screen not being able to move forward.

Thanks for sharing your story! I actually really like this idea; I might steal mimic this idea from you.

This idea has already been suggested.

The verdict from Mat himself:

Yeh we want to keep that kind of thing well separate from the art of making music. That's actually why I wanted to start this forum in the first place

Some people do not want to be famous, they just want to make music. I would never begrudge someone for doing that, especially since there are certain genres where that type of work is expected to happen (Pop). Lady Gaga was a ghostwriter before she started her own career. Kendrick Lamarr, Jay-Z, Ludacris, and many other well known rappers wrote bars for Dr. Dre. Even many of the most famous hollywood composers have ghostwriters, just because of how hard it would be for one person to write some of these major blockbuster soundtracks alone.

In electronic music, like in rap, it feels like a betrayal or a scam only for those who care about the process behind the music. You have your Meek Mills, who pride themselves on their lyrical ability and the fact that they can make their way through nothing but their own creativity. Then you have your Drakes, who pride themselves on their ability to perform and entertain their audience - it's not a big deal how much of the creative work behind it was theirs, because their creativity is in their stage presence.

I've actually asked non-producer friends of mine if they care that Armin or Tiesto uses ghostwriters for all their songs, and they could not care less. They just wanna hear good music.

Who am I to tell them that they're wrong?

Anotha one [/DJKhaled]:

Get a notebook or open a notepad app BEFORE you start working on your project. Brainstorm a bunch of different song ideas in your spare time. For each one, start writing down words that help describe the song: "Liquid Drum and Bass, 170 BPM, stormy seas, angry and sad, female vocals, dark drums, etc." Write down the element of the song that you want to be the primary focus (Drums, Vocals, Bass, Chords, Melody, etc.). Try to write out a basic skeleton for the song. "8 bar intro, 12 bar break, 8 bar build, 2 bar pre-drop, 32 bar drop, 4 bar fadeout, 16 bar break, 16 bar build, 2 bar pre-drop, 32 bar drop, 8 bar outro." If you know theory, pick a few key signatures or chord progressions you could try. Try to write down some hook ideas or lyrics if that's what you're going for. Make sure you have at least 2 or 3 before your next production session.

When you finally go sit down in front of your DAW, pick one of those song ideas and start from whatever the primary focus is: If Drums, build a simple drum kit that reminds you of the words you've written down. It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough to work with. If you already have a generic drum kit in your template, stick with that. If bass, chords, or melody, use a piano sampler or a basic synth patch (pure saws or squares work) just for the basic idea. If vocals, go find some vocal samples that fit or that you can chop, or set up your microphone just so you can get the lines down. Once you've established that primary idea, you can put more generic placeholders in the other elements, and go straight from there to arrangement. You can refine it later, because once you have the song placed into the skeleton you wrote down and can see what sounds should go where, you can really start going in and making everything unique and get your track finished.

Instead of having an introductory thread, maybe we could establish some sort of profile biography where you can put a lot of that information. That way if someone is curious about a member, they can just click on their profile and go to their bio instead of having to find their social media information or dig through some big thread.

Well we already have a similar thing with stickies, in my opinion. I think as the forum develops past its infancy, we'll start to see trends emerge and forum moderators and other active members of the community can start creating megathreads that get stuck to the top of each forum like the various announcements. We can start creating big OPs with info that's been collected, have a sort of "verified" FAQ for the most commonly asked questions on each topic, and really cut down on the clutter so new threads have enough time to get noticed.

I do think we need some sort of discovery system to help regulate the feedback section, though.

Here's a Dada Life video on it.

The basic idea is this: Take a song that you know is absolutely slamming. A full on banger. The best track in your library. Put it in an audio track on your DAW and solo it. Listen to the drop. Then unsolo, mute the track, and listen to your own drop.

What does their track have that your track doesn't? The differences should SCREAM out at you. You can use this for a lot of different areas of your own production.

Here are some videos by SeamlessR that can help explain how to analyze that sort of stuff.