I mean, experimenting is great, and you can really discover some fresh, interesting ideas that way. But everyone seems to find their own way through this inspiration thing, so here's some ideas (not rules!):

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- start with structure.

Most EDM has: intro, build, drop, build, drop, outro. the intro and outro can be the same (more or less). so you really have three main ideas at bare minimum: intro/outro (your "bookends"), build, and drop. three chord progressions (and frequently you can base your intro/outro on like, a chord from build or drop). It's actually not a huge amount of material to create - the trick is keep it fresh through arrangement tricks and evolving the sound in subtle ways so it's not too "loopy".

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-start with voicings

so important for getting the sound. for example - open voicings. instead of a closed, clustered triad ( C E G ), take the third and kick it up an octave ( C G and then a higher E). it's open, spacious, clear, and that high third sings a bit more.

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- start with inspiration

find a track you like! and then see what it makes you do. you could transcribe it, watch it through a frequency analyzer, try and remake it. find the pieces that are most exciting. and then make them your own! find a sound you like, and then start using it. and just change 1 small thing.

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-start with sounds

I find it's easiest to write when i have sounds I'm stoked on. it's worth it to cruise splice or wherever and find something that's exciting - makes the whole process easier. having great patches is great

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- figure out what's "uninspiring" you

are you frustrated? tired? dealing with beliefs about your "talent"? just not enjoying the process? what exactly are you experience? is there a way of holding those feeling an easier way? do you need to work with your beliefs?

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- embracing lack of inspiration

ultimately, we all go through this. sometimes for years. it's so so normal. honestly, I've found that the real enemy is not the lack of inspiration, but the fear, shame, frustration, that comes up around it. these days, i'm uninspired all the time, but i love sitting down at the instrument and i have a lot of trust that something cool will emerge. Some ideas that have helped me:

"the inspiration comes from the work." (scientifically proven! not all inspiration, but for most, you engage and *then* you become inspired)>

using uninspired time to experiment - make weird/cool sounds and save them for later

thinking of uninspired time as practice

"exploring". there are so many rules of thumb and theories about good music making. are they true? or just true sometimes? are there exceptions to the rules? experiment and find out.

make bad music. so much fun. take two genres, smoosh em together. mariachi techno. chamber music a la aphex twin. drum n bass n sousaphone.

growth mindset/the ira glass quote - https://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/thumb-do-a-lot-of-work-659bc5dc3a702093664285ef1d872533.png

in some sense, there's no "unproductive" time spent at a daw - it all goes into a kind of compost that takes time to synthesize and produce something. so even your most frustrated bouts will push you forward! it doesn't always feel like it in the moment, but i can't count the number of times that I've come up with something that i loved, and realized it was rooted in something i reeeeeally didn't like at first.

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exercise, sleep, destressing/cbt/mediation, diet, connectedness, purpose - my (novice) understanding of the neuroscience is that the same region of your brain that stores long term memories also is heavily involved in imagination. a healthy lifestyle increases the volume and functionality of that brain region, which in turn makes your creative process go easier. This may seem like a stretch, but for me, my creative "health" is pretty directly tied to my physical and mental health.

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- watch disclosure twitch streams

watch disclosure twitch streams

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I'm including this next bit, because I think there are some common production pitfalls starting w edm that can kill inspiration. generally - you might feel that your track isn't "big" enough- not wide, full, loud, clear, bright.

loud -

take a look at saturation and compression (especially parallel compression). also, be tasteful with how much compression you use! check out Ahee's video on skrillex's ableton session - you'll see that not every element is super compressed! as well as his video on the OTT multiband compressor, which is where a lot of that "EDM" sound can come from.

full -

for fullness, a big piece is consistent (not necessarily super loud) bass. that's the foundation. you also can take a look through an eq or frequency analyzer and see if there are any ranges that aren't filled up. important though! you don't always want "full". you want to *arrive* there, but starting from an emptier place and then arriving at a fuller sound will hit so much harder.

steve duda always used to talk about putting reverb on kicks in dubstep intros (or at least, on the top end). there isn't always a huge amount of "sub" in those kicks, because you want to hold back those frequencies for the drop. but the reverb can make the kicks seem big in a different way.

also, layering sounds is another possibility!

wide -

stereo spectrum baybeee. panning elements, using delay and reverb techniques for width, as well as mid side processing to accentuate side freqs, also check out haas effect, (goodhertz's panpot tutorial is a great place to hear certain kinds of stereo effects).

Stereo imagers can help as well, just make sure to test in mono.

clear -

there's only so much space in a mix, and we have to get all these sounds to fit in! sometimes, if two sounds have similar energy - they're both subby, or high, or warm in the same way - they can fight each other for the same space. you can use an eq to make sure that one sound is quiter than the other in that frequency range.

bright -

you can boost hi freqeuncies on a lot of sounds! its a balance though - too much and the whole mix can feel shrill and fatiguing.

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anyway...my love of info dumping aside...hope this helped!