Warning: I'm about to piss off a lot of people with this post (but don't give damn).
-- > Since when the essence of making music is about chord progression theory bullshit? Or about sub-genre codes or rules?
As much as I know about music (spent my whole life in music conservatory) and as much as love liquid (hence my description), it really gets me on my f*cking nerves to see people - producers or not - blabbing about how things are done or should be done.
Here mate is the one and only advice you must have to begin with:
Make music from your heart.
Dont make music to imitate,
Nor to respect rules,
Nor from a specific technique,
Nor please other people more than yourself.
You must know than the best tunes in any genre have been made by complete accident while trying NOT to respect rules or usual technique.
If you want to find your sound, you just need you EAR.
Because it is your ear that will define your definition of beautiful, your definition of innovative, your definition of finished, of not good enough, of similar to this or that (when trying to reproduce a specific sound design you heard).
What defines you as an artist is your taste for what you aspire to make.
And when I bitch about chord progression theory and producing tips, of course I'm not a nazi saying all of this is crap, but when giving advices to someone beginning, the only thing that should matter it to keep this someone from getting LOST (like so many people).
Don't get lost in production skills learning or theory or sample tweeking, focus only on your EAR, your IDEAS.
I think when you begin you just need to MAKE music first and then make sound design, chord progression and sample fit the melody you have in mind, not the other way around.
Otherwise you will get lost.
Of course when you get (really really) skilled you'll be able to throw at you DAW without any idea in mind and then you ear will spot some part of what you have no idea what you were doing at first to assemble it as a whole piece of music.
I think people are waaaaay too much forgetting about this progression path and trying too early to use skills they barely master on a complete lack of musical ideas, a complete lack of melody. So they go learn chord progression of use sample to try and make it sound like actual music.
But c'mon fellas this is just bad. This defines bad musicians, those who didn't develop their EARS, and thought the fingers could do all by themselves. Maybe that's why we don't have that many good producers out there.
Hope it help.
Sorry for the rage, but I'm very passionate about this.
Just don't be afraid of what your mind wants to create. Try try try try and one day this will finally sound how you wanted it to be or sometimes surprisingly even better.