My partner and I both tried to learn music production from free YouTube lessons. We got stuck and quit. Then we tried again and quit again, more than once.
My partner also took several courses, and she still struggled to make it stick as a neurodivergent person. So this guide won't give you another list of gear. It covers the part after you open the app, which is where we kept getting lost.
How to start music production as a beginner
Pick a song you love and rebuild a piece of it in your DAW (the app you make music in). Then change things until it starts to sound like you. Practice a little and often, and find someone who expects to hear what you made.
You learn production by making tracks. A song you love gives you a reason to open the project again tomorrow, and that matters more than which lesson you watch first.
What you need
- A computer. Mac or Windows both work for most DAWs.
- Headphones. The pair you already own is fine to start.
- A DAW. This guide uses Ableton Live. Ableton gives you a free 30-day trial of Live 12 Suite. When it ends you can still open your projects, but you can't save or export them, so start the trial in a week when you have time to use it. On a Mac, GarageBand is free too.
Why tutorials didn't stick for us
Free lessons taught us plenty of buttons. However, the lesson's track was never ours, so once the video ended there was no pull to keep going. And when we got stuck, nobody noticed that we stopped.
Looking back, two things were missing: music we were excited about, and someone to keep us going. The steps below put both back in.
Step 1 Pick a track you love
Choose a song from the genre you want to make, one you'd happily hear 100 times (you will). If you love it, you'll want to know how it works, and that curiosity is what brings you back to the project.
For the first one, pick a track with a clear beat and only a few parts. It is much easier to take apart than a song with twenty layers.
Your favorite trackPlays 100+Caution: will be taken apart
Step 2 Load it into Ableton and loop the best part
Search the song's name plus "bpm" to find its tempo. Type that number into the tempo field at the top left of Ableton. Then press Tab to open Arrangement View and drag the song onto an audio track.
Turn on the metronome (the button next to the tempo) and press play. If the clicks land on the kick drum, you're set. If they drift, double-click the clip and check that Warp is on.
Find the part you like most, often the drop or the chorus. Select 8 bars of it and press Cmd+L (Ctrl+L on Windows) to loop them.
Step 3 Rebuild it one part at a time
Now make your own copy under the original. Start with the drums, because they are the easiest part to hear.
- Add a MIDI track and drag a kit onto it from the Drums section of the browser.
- Select 8 bars on that track and press Cmd+Shift+M (Ctrl+Shift+M on Windows) to make an empty MIDI clip.
- Double-click the clip, press B for draw mode, and click notes in. Do the kick first, then the snare or clap, then the hi-hats.
- Mute your track, play the original, then unmute and compare. Move notes until they match.
Then do the bass, then the chords. Search the song's name plus "key" so you know which notes to try. Your copy won't sound the same, and it doesn't need to. You are learning where each part sits and why the beat feels the way it does.
Step 4 Mess with it until it's yours
Once you have a rough copy, mute the original and change one thing at a time. Swap the drum kit, move the snare, or try new chords over the same bass.
Some changes will sound worse. Some will sound better than the song you started from, and those are the start of your own sound. Keep them and keep going.
Step 5 Practice in short, regular sessions
Watching a lesson feels like progress, but you only learn Ableton by using it. Open the same project a few times a week, even for 20 minutes, and make one change each time.
Learn a new tool on the day your track needs it. For example, when you want the bass to duck under the kick, that's the day to learn sidechain compression. A tool you learn for your own track tends to stay with you.
Step 6 Find someone to answer to
A tutor helps in two ways. First, they cut the friction: you ask about the one knob that confuses you, get an answer, and go back to making music. Without that, a small question can end the session.
Second, they add commitment. When someone expects to hear your track, you open the project. A tutor can be a teacher, a friend who produces, or a feedback group in your genre.
What does this knob do?
That's the filter cutoff. Turn it down and the sound gets darker. Try it on the chords.
What to skip at the start
- Buying plugins. Ableton's own instruments and effects are plenty for your first tracks.
- Mastering. Finish a few rough tracks first.
- Lessons your track doesn't need yet. Learn things as they come up.
- A new project every day. Come back to the same one, so each session builds on the last.
- Making sounds from scratch. Start from presets and change them.
Once you have a loop you like, the next step is turning it into a full song. Our guide on how to arrange a song from an 8-bar loop shows how, step by step.