I'm a little late to the party, but here's what I do for creating a typical electronic style instrumental:
Since I've yet to even make a good melody/vocal line, I obviously start from instrumental up. Usually I just get an idea, and put that right into the piano roll (I use FL btw), either with a piano or (usually) my go to synthesizer Harmor. From there I'll usually tweak the sound of the synth briefly, and send it to a track ready for mixing later. Depending on what I'm doing, I may either continue working on the synthesizer or go ahead and make the beat (sometimes I'll do this earlier, but rarely). I start with a crude beat (usually just a kick and snare) to see how my lead fits with the type of beat I want, and adjust as needed. From there it's usually "building out": taking the short bit I've just made and creating the lead in and the first what you'd call a drop perhaps. Somewhere between these steps I'll start working on filling out the track: giving it depth by adding background synthesizers/pads/arps/percussion, and will generally start mixing here. Now I've got a single build/chorus going on; from here it's creating the second (and third if the song has it, of something other than this pattern altogether depending on the song) and final part, which I'm admittedly horrible at (most of my instrumentals are short, excessively repetitive, or both).sometimes I never make it to this expansion step, and the instrumental will be "stuck". I have quite a few of those. Anyways, for the last part it's just adding any extra percussion stuff, and mixing (another weak spot for me).
Since I've yet to even make a good melody/vocal line, I obviously start from instrumental up. Usually I just get an idea, and put that right into the piano roll (I use FL btw), either with a piano or (usually) my go to synthesizer Harmor. From there I'll usually tweak the sound of the synth briefly, and send it to a track ready for mixing later. Depending on what I'm doing, I may either continue working on the synthesizer or go ahead and make the beat (sometimes I'll do this earlier, but rarely). I start with a crude beat (usually just a kick and snare) to see how my lead fits with the type of beat I want, and adjust as needed. From there it's usually "building out": taking the short bit I've just made and creating the lead in and the first what you'd call a drop perhaps. Somewhere between these steps I'll start working on filling out the track: giving it depth by adding background synthesizers/pads/arps/percussion, and will generally start mixing here. Now I've got a single build/chorus going on; from here it's creating the second (and third if the song has it, of something other than this pattern altogether depending on the song) and final part, which I'm admittedly horrible at (most of my instrumentals are short, excessively repetitive, or both).sometimes I never make it to this expansion step, and the instrumental will be "stuck". I have quite a few of those. Anyways, for the last part it's just adding any extra percussion stuff, and mixing (another weak spot for me).
