If you're a guitar player, which I'm assuming you are, start with what you know best. For me, I write on guitar, and usually I will try to imagine a drum beat that would go to it, and then I'll program a simple drum beat with ANY drum program and riff to the drum beat. Usually that will spark either a new idea, where the song should go, or some different kind of strum pattern after hearing it with a drum beat.

For me though, it definitely starts with guitar and a basic drum beat. Then I go back and make the drum programming "interesting". I tend to demo stuff for my bands, so usually I just write what we call "skeletons" for my drummers. They're going to add their own flavor to the beats so I keep them simple and let them add actual drummer flavor to them. I can program real sounding drums, and I understand drums from working in studios for so many years, but I am NOT a drummer.

Starting with the drums and guitar is integral to song writing for me. So many ideas I'll hear in my head will evolve into even better ideas just hearing drums behind my riffs. Sometimes I'll screw around and throw a kick drum hit in a wrong spot on accident but really like the result and suddenly the riff has a new strum pattern or sparks an extension to the riff that I didn't hear before.

Also, yea man. Don't give up. Anyone who tells you that is dumb. My only other piece of advice is to take breaks. Sometimes I'll be confused or struggling with something, and I'm pulled away from the computer for something else that I have to take care of around the house. When I go back with a fresh mind, suddenly I hear exactly what to do and wonder why I was sitting there lost for the last half hour. Breaks will give your mind time to sit with it and process everything in the back of your mind. Trust me, it works.

Go back through your other songs or projects and try tweaks and tricks you learned on THOSE projects. Try to get then to sound a bit better, you'll learn little things by trial and error that you'll suddenly realize will work on another song, and it builds from there.

Hone your craft, my friend. If it were easy it would suck anyway. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Take the time to learn, accept that you will have nothing to show for it for a while, and thats o.k. cause you eventually WILL have something to show for it. I think the saying is that it takes 10,000 hours to master a craft. Put in your 10,000 hours of trial and error, experimentation, and just screwing around for the sake of messing something up! Who cares?! You can always write another song or even re-record the thing.

 

I actually go as far as rendering the whole project or buses into a WAV, making it sound the way I like it, then sneaking my songs into my music playlist with similar sounding tracks. You get a pretty good insight into how well your song is. Not just the mix, but the arrangement also.