@Zaalan3
A. Get away from your computer and eat crazy spicy salsa with either chips, eggs (poached preferred), or a baked potato. After your mouth has cooled and you have stopped sweating so much, get some (real) CD's that you bought from the music store that used to exist a few blocks from you and let the acoustic waves from your (non-computer) speakers bounce around the room as you lie back in bed taking in this atmosphere you've created.
B. 4 measure progression repeating 4 times = Section. SectionB - SectionA = different melody, different key, and different 4 measure progression repeating 4 times.
C. Sing the melody out your throat and then paint-by-number through scale-chord relationships.
@goluigi
A. Treat harmony as melody.
B. Realize that in most cases, the only difference between dissonance and feasible consonance is one semitone.

@Zaalan3

A. I'm sure different things work for different people, but one of my primary sources of inspiration is life experiences that feel meaningful to me, or at least interesting to communicate through the medium of music. Get out (or in) there and Experience Life, and then reflect on those experiences (even if they were someone else's, or even if they're fictional scenarios), think about the emotions involved, and think about what that sounds like. Of course there's music qua music (there have been heated historical disagreements about whether music should be representative or abstract, which is very silly--do what works for you), and another source of inspiration for me has been listening very closely to music that I love and taking (mental or physical) note of what the composer is doing and what their intent might be.

B. There are some cheap tricks you can do to "recycle" material you've written and make it sound fresh with minimal changes. Try taking a pattern or section you've already written and messing with it in different ways, like changing the instrumentation, adding accompaniment, changing the drums, syncopating it, et cetera. This works best with a contrasting section in between.

C. Do you generally write harmonies first, or melodies first? My approach is almost always harmonic first and foremost, and my melodies are almost afterthoughts that seem to fall into place naturally over the chord changes (I know, that's not much help). bakabutt's advice is good--try coming up with a melody by singing it first, and then transcribing it into the tracker. Chances are you'll end up with something more natural-sounding this way.

@goluigi

A. Experiment. Try things you wouldn't normally try in terms of how you voice and transition chords. Regardless of whether what you try works or not, you'll get Knowledge and Experience. Repeat to yourself: "Mozart be fucked".

B. Distinct timbres, pitch ranges, and stereo positions can go a long way here. Something that sounds "bad" can end up sounding just fine if you play around with these parameters. And now I have to leave; sorry I can't say more!

To zaalan's b, getting a handle on the keyboard shortcuts for a tracker helps. Efficient navigation saves time.

For sure. If you find that in s3xmodit OHBs you're sinking time into things like manually scaling volumes or swapping instruments for every note in a channel, or manually doing effect/volume slides, take a good look at your tracker's documentation. All the major/modern XM/IT trackers have ways of automating these tasks.

i will answer these questions to the best i can, some of these are ones i think i can handle well! sorry for the essays, but i hope this advice helps u as much as it's helped me over this year

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ZAALAN
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A• To begin, I find "creative juices" are just experiences filtered by your unique, perceptive brain to be then utilized within expression in your art. The mind's potential to understand itself is always there, and creation of art is a strong execution of this. Ideas are floating around in your mind, and you must understand how to snatch them so you can utilize their potential.

Your creativity is a general thing. Music can be inspired by non-musical things just like how the inverse is true as well. Thus, creating in other rewarding fields is beneficial too. Let's cook! Food is meant to benefit you and be enjoyed, and cooking it yourself gives you a live deconstruction of what makes the meal. I don't feel it immediately, but I find it inspires me to see this deconstruction of an idea that I can afterwards enjoy, also. Eggs do work well for this since you can cook them in so many ways and utilize them in almost anything! I like to make many forms of eggs from scrambled to poached and putting various things on there, especially salsa. If you can, you want to go for Ms.Renfro's (Habanero!) because it's the best. Writing music gets easier for you when you 'write' in other practices too, such as this. It can be writing, painting, or whatever else -- but food is a daily necessity and I like to eat, so that's my top choice.

Environment also matters, and one you're unsatisfied or indifferent about will reduce your creativity. If you have a messy room, clean it up. Have things in there you don't care for or never use? Store them elsewhere, or throw them out. If you like visual art, put such pieces that you like on your wall, but only a few. You want your main area that you're in to feel like your space to relax and let thoughts simmer, not be distracted nor over-stimulated. Just be content with the room you make music in and/or your bedroom, or it will distract your workflow and thoughts, reducing the sense of satisfaction with self and overall confidence.

Now, while the past two sources of inspiration have seemed influential in non-musical ways, you can still draw a ton of life from music itself. It's important to study music, especially pieces that you really enjoy and want to know deeply. If you don't know theory, look into it. There is a separation you must have between listening to music, and studying music. If you just absorb the music on the surface level, listening, you're going to approach your music with a mind polluted with ideas that you can't fully understand, but only approximate at. On the other hand, studying music gives you an understanding because you aim to learn more than what only listening can accomplish. This is just as productive as writing music, and you can do it by learning theory, or covering a song you feel you must know more about. If you don't understand a song that you want to understand, deconstruct it until you do. This is something you will gain from, expanding your intuitive abilities far more than casually listening or writing forever will.

When you listen to music, it's to enjoy it. When you study music, it's so you can apply it.

Long story short, make your own foods when you can, exist in a comfortable environment, and study music. Your ideas are always there within potential, and you just need your mind to be stimulated enough to access that.
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B• (the other ppl gave great advice on this)

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C• I can be brief with this and say that my own skill-level with melodies is getting progressively better; but why? Up until recently, I'd write chords first in a song, the progression usually going: chords > drums > bass > melody

Now, the melody is what carries a song forward, and is the strongest expression of the statement the piece as a whole is bringing. Therefore, I've found that writing a melody first is best then bass, chords, and drums/whatever else you have. The bass is a low, rhythmic counter-melody that fits with your main melodic line. Chords should flow with these two elements while still voicing their own purpose. Percussion should emphasize what is meant to be impactful in the rhythm without the perc there, so putting kicks where strong chords are helps a lot. But overall, no part should be copying what another is doing, they should all be expressing what their own variations on one idea. Oh, and one more tip: the song should sound 'complete' in composition with only the melody and bass. Bass carries the counter-melody and rhythm, the melody expresses the main point of the song. If it isn't strong with the melody and bass isolated, you still need practice writing those elements, because in the end those are the core of a song.
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GOLUIGI
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(iunno may write something here later, i'm not the best source on that kind of stuff especially when trying to explain it!)

To Keffie, Whenever I jump into an ohb, I always feel like what I'm making is incomplete, a fraction of an idea. Take this for example. Iwant to flesh things out, feel satisfied with what I did for a change.

Thank you for your advise on point B, A lot of the time spent is usually timesinking into sample editing and other tracker tasks. I guess learning those shortcuts would really speed up my process.

Also I've been tending to write with drums>bass>melody>chords.
I guess this is all outta wack :PP. I honestly know nothing about chords and tend to put them off til the end cuz I dont like messing with them.

Chords are just things to puff up the sound some tbh and a song can be really fine without chords! I can understand putting drums first because rhythm can inspire ideas too. But, I definitely think trying to do melody first would be a good thing to try. It's a bit tough at first but if you keep at it, your song can center around your melody, thus making it sound stronger and more cohesive as a result.

As for chords, if you know what key your song is in, it's okay to look up what the chords are in that scale and mess around with getting something that sounds good with them. Don't forget that the weight and tone of your chords change with if they're triads, seventh chords, or even nine. There's a lot to learn with chords and it's one of the more precise elements of music as they're to strengthen the overall harmony of the song. Anyways, good luck! :>

I don't know if this fits in with the questions goluigi asked, but heres a good time anyway to say well done with venkatenarasimhar (sorry if incorrect spelling). I haven't heard much in the way of minor key with your songs and I really enjoyed this. I think more minor key experimentation can only be good thing, to add balance to a song's theme. Like with that song, it didn't have to stay minor all the way through for it to have an impact. I know its not overly a golgicore thing to request as an improvement, but perhaps that is the point, as you are looking to develop and not necessarily stay the same.

gotoandplay, actually i use minor keys more than major keys but it ends up sounding happy anyway lol..........i think that's what makes my music sound how it does

maybe because i base the melody around the major scale but put the chords in minor??? idk