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Beating writer's block
There are lots of ways to get those creative juices flowing, but one of my favorite methods is to find a movie trailer that you'd find interesting, and watch the video on mute and compose your song around the trailer.
Atmospheric/Unique Synth stabs
A good trick for synth stabs is to design your little stab, and keep it short. Then put a reverb over the stab, then have fun. Distortion, flangers, and phasers give you some amazing sounds out of the little stab's reverb, especially if set the synth to mono, then the reverb is stereoized.
Tip: Odd Time Signatures
[d.o.p] suggests getting out the habit of using 4/4. Switch it up with an odd time signature such as 6/8 or even 14/16. It may be difficult but once you master the theory of music and utilizing odd time signatures, that will put you one step above the rest of EDM producers out there.
DCMB adds that breaking apart the numerator of the time signature (14/16 = a 4,4,3,3,4 pattern) into patterns of 4,3,2, and 1 help keep it from being overwhelmingly weird/not audibly appealing.
Tip: 'Ghosting' the reverb
A trick I like to use for leads and atmosphere filler is what I call 'ghosting' the reverb. You take the pattern/riff that you want to 'ghost', and make a copy of the instrument. Copy and paste the pattern, so there are two exact copies of it. Put a reverb effect on the second instrument, and set the wetness to 100% and the dryness to 0%. Now, you can layer the reverb with the first instrument, but the real neatness of this trick is that you can now automate the reverb without affecting the lead, giving the pattern a helluva lot more subtle niceness. You can gate the ghost, you can sidechain it, or distort it with some automation, for example.
- DCMB
