[Do You Focus On One Genre? I Find It Hard]

I know some people who are all about one particular genre, but it seems like the stuff that I write is all over the place. One day I'll be so excited about making rock music, the next it will be gentle acoustic folk stuff , the next it will be dance or some other random thing.

I'm trying to put together a bit of an album and really struggling trying to decide on what to include and what not to include.

There's songs that I like but I kind of worry that they wont fit with the general theme of the album, and at that point I don't really know what genre/theme I'm even going for!

Has anyone else had similar troubles? What have you done to focus and over come them?

[Layering Guitar Parts]

This is probably a quite random question, and maybe not even the right place to post. I'll ask anyway and hope it is.

I'm a self-taught guitar player (and not a very good one) but in terms of song writing, I've always be interested in the structure. The main thing I don't understand is layering of different parts. Say you had a guitar playing a B5 chord which was distorted (slightly punk/rock style), and then you had a guitar riff over it. What notes can be used in the guitar riff? Do they have to relate to the B5 chord and match some sort of key?

Any answers are really appreciated, I hope I haven't asked it too confusingly.

The simple answer is what ever you think sounds good!

Do you know much about keys and scales? In the context of a whole song it can be helpful to know a bit about them as a starting point for making melodies/riffs