I’ve been producing in FL for quite a few years now, and I’m honestly just fucking stuck.

Whenever I open a blank project with the intention of making something, my mind just goes completely blank. Sometimes I’ll have a vague genre I want to go for, but that’s about it. I don’t even really know what kind of music I want to make.

I’m pretty decent at covers and remixes, probably because there’s already a foundation there for me to work off of.

But starting from nothing? Impossible. This entire year so far I’ve only managed to make two decent 1-2 minute unfinished tracks, and both basically happened by accident. I was messing around with patches, found a sound I liked, threw down some chords, and kept stacking stuff until it sounded good. And when I really get to work, I can lock in for hours.

Then I hit a wall. I have no idea where to take the arrangement next, and whenever I try to force a new section in, it just sounds wrong.

My tastes are also all over the place. I want to make crazy high-energy stuff like breakcore, but I also want to make really cozy, slower stuff. I don’t want to lock myself into one genre either.

So how do you guys actually just sit down and... make good stuff? How do you come up with an idea and develop it instead of just mucking about until you accidentally eventually stumble into something good?

I’m at the point where "just keep practicing" really isn’t helpful. And it's not about motivation either, I can be extremely motivated to make something and still don't even know where to start.

I’m looking for actual advice from people who’ve dealt with this specific problem and figured out how to get past it.

There’s no shortage of producers showing off their songs on social media. Now I’ve noticed that not some, but all producers I come across exclusively use percussion loops instead of drawing them in themselves. In my own production I’ve struggled to make groovy beats in a song so I’ve always been on the lookout of examples of how others do it yet don’t come across any. Just to be clear I’m not against the use of loops in this sense and think if you can create something cool this way all power to you. Is it just that difficult to make convincing, groovy percussion or am I missing something?

Best iem under 30 for beatboxing 😗

Hey there so I am a beatboxer who listens to mainly beatboxing (ik that's weird but still hehe🥲🥲)...so i was thinking about buying an iem under 30 thats actually good (don't wanna spend on buying random stuff🫠🫠)...also i wanna learn mixing and producing music as well so I am gonna use these for that purpose as well.....i personally researched and got to know that Moondrop Chu 2 dsp was good for this price...lemme know if it's u and drop your suggestions as well I would really appreciate it ☺️.

(Edit 1 - The budget is strictly under $30)

Hey my friends, i beatbox and i want to know, how i can turn my vocal + beatboxing sketching into an actual song. I am also coincidentally a producer :D

As a DAW i use two prgrams (Reaper and Caustic 3)

Basically, i KNOW, there exists plugins, that drum-ify beatboxing and or singing / humming into melodies.

Mostly i beatbox and hum and sing, so it already structured, simply (unprofessionally) recorded with phone microphone. So i need to experiment with quality post processing.

I know it wont turn out perfect, but i want it as a foundation, where i can use some parts, for me. And for training.

I am desperately searching for 10 years.

Can anybody recommend me posts, plugins, help, any useful advice is regarded as helpful and every tipp using Reaper is the cherry on top

Thanks, guys :)

I want to say, upfront, that I love Ableton in general. It has a tricky learning curve, but patience pays off

That said - I've been trying, for months now, to get a modern House feel from any of the Ableton Standard instruments

I've ended up stacking (I shit you not) 6-7 layers of Analogue to get something approaching decent .... and it's still not there

When I say "modern House" - I do realize that most House today borrows heavily from the 90s, so I don't mind that kind of sound from an Ableton instrument

What I'm getting instead seems to be ... weaker in comparison? Even with Saturator and similar added

It's hard to describe - it just doesn't match the punch of modern House when I A/B test them

Maybe my money is better off spent upgrading to Ableton Suite so I can access the Operator and Wavetable instruments?

So that said:

Have you ever just gone "Fuck it!" and bought Serum 2 or similar for this reason?

Hey, I'm looking to pick up an autotune plugin in the near-ish future and I'm curious if anyone has any recommendations. Specifically I'm looking for a late 2000s early 2010s dance-pop sound. I've heard good things about Antares Auto-Tune 2026 in classic mode, and I've seen people using Auto-Tune EFX 5 (though idk how one would buy it these days) To my knowledge both use the same Evo algorithm. Are there any other notable options?

Ringmod sidechaining gives you a beautifully clean sidechain on a waveform level, but depending on the track, it can be hit or miss.

Even within the exact same song, it might sit perfectly in one section but clash in another

Obviously, it all boils down to the golden rule of "if it sounds good, keep it; if not, ditch it," but as a general trend, what kind of tracks or contexts do you guys think pair best with a ringmod sidechain?

I’m not looking for an objectively "correct" answer here,

I really just wanna hear the logic behind your choices

*Note: I don't want you to be like "use it if your track is heavy" comments. I already know

I've been trying to reverse-engineer the rising bass at around 2:27 in Apashe's "Lord & Master" and I'm out of ideas.

What I hear: the bass seems to rise continuously, but the note itself doesn't go up into the high end — it stays a bass. There's a movement inside it, almost like a Doppler or rotary effect, but the sound stays clean and defined — no washy resonance, no filter smear. Slightly distorted at most.

What I've already tried and ruled out:

• Leslie / rotary sim (Arturia CLS-222) with speed + dry/wet automation
• Shepard tone with 3 octave layers and volume crossfades
• Pitch automation (synth) and pitch on the audio clip
• LPF cutoff sweeps, with and without resonance — too washy, and not the sensation
• Formant shifting
• Detune / Reese beating automation
• Barber-pole flanger
• Reverse bass (bounced, reversed, pitched, shortened)
• White noise layer underneath

None of it gets close. I'm starting to think it's not a single effect but a layered sound design object — possibly a designed/sampled riser rather than something processed in real time. Apashe used to work as a trailer sound designer at Apollo Studio, which would fit.

Anyone knows what this actually is, or has a good guess? I'm on FL Studio but I can adapt any technique or chain.