First I begin with finding a sample. To do this I usually buy records from my local thrift-shop for new sounds, go on youtube escapades finding related songs that can be sampled, or find one song by an artist and pirate the discography and listen to its entirety for other samples in their anthology. To begin a song, I first find a loop that sounds good and put it on the backburner. Once I succeed in looping the sample, I start to play around with it, slow it down, speed it up, pitch shift it, or add some effects onto it, until I'm pleased with it. I then create the basic structure of a song using the loop and try to find a "chorus"/break/hook for the track so it's not completely monotonous (I need to get better at this, because some of my tacks are very repetitive). Once the basic bones are set, I add some metaphorical skin and organs into the empty host. This is where I put the most effort into my songs, creating the atmosphere that blends with the song itself to better the entire track. A loop can be fine and dandy for a little while, but if you add an entirely new dimension to the song, it gets so much better, like seeing in 4D instead of boring old 3D. I usually start by contextualising what I want the song to sound like or "sonically" represent, and decide what the song's "statement" or "feelings" are. After I decide on a theme, I use a blend of nature sounds, field recordings (I'll continue on this in a bit), and various sounds I have in my Itunes library and spend a few hours blending them together to nestle underneath the actual track. I usually use audacity to create these sounds and messing around a lot with all the different effects, using reverb, flange, pitch and speed changes, timestretching, and multi voice generators to make it sound really cool. To find these sonic melodies and samples online I use this thread, youtubedownloader, or songs I already have in my Itunes repetoir. All of these add a cool sonic aspect to your track, but it can be furthered with the addition of textures using my field recorder, which Avey inspired my to use (it's what's used at the end of Leaf House, beginning of Who Could Win a Rabbit, and a lot of songs on Sung Tongs). The field recorder takes simple sounds like walking on leaves or anything, and amplifies them, making some really cool sounds. Plastic bags with marijuana in it can now be crinkled for some great effects, flowing water, hoses, stepping on leaves or pinecones, cars, all recorded in stereophonic fidelity can now be sprinkled throughout your track. The field recorder I bought is this one, a relatively cheap, but very effective way to enhance your music. Once the metaphorical organs are in place, I add the "skin" over the top. This includes voice samples, extra flair, and finally EQ'ing the track. For voice samples I go almost exclusively to /r/obscuremedia, it's got everything you want there, the last track "Rains" in my album has a sample from this video. This subreddit has a magical collection of childhood beauty, and a vivid variety of voices, sounds and cool stuff. With EQing, I smoke some weed or do some meditation before I listen to the song, I then write my initial reactions to the song in my sample notebook, citing parts where there's clipping, faulty looping or bad EQ, and then once I know what I want the song to sound like I start to EQ. Once all of this is done, I take a walk and listen to the song a few times to make sure I'm happy with how the song sounds, and share it with some of my friends and see how they appreciate it, do some minor editing and publish the song. If you send me anything you've done so far, I could suggest some stuff you could do to make it better, and I could also send you a few examples of the "undertrack" if you want.