AHHH okay bear with me here. as a self-taught musician this is my favorite thing in the world to talk about so i'll try not to overwhelm you with a wall of text, as well as provide actionable resources for you to check out :)
a brief summary of my musical journey from ages 15-25: you may remember 10 years ago ukuleles were all the rage. [shudders] i was gifted one by my father for christmas...and it sat in a corner of my room for a year straight. i wanted to learn to play so badly but i was just too intimidated. finally i picked it up and dedicated myself to learning it. despite how stereotypical it might be as a 'beginner' instrument, it actually worked quite well for that purpose - learning things like chords, strumming, etc. i should note that i never have attempted to learn music theory or even what the notes on the fretboard are - this is because my father is quite literally a musical savant (not bragging necessarily, he's just awesome ok) and plays pretty much every instrument by ear, so that's what he taught me to do. after about a year of playing ukulele pretty badly, i was gifted a spare old acoustic guitar by my dad and i found it incredibly easy to transition from playing ukulele to playing guitar. most of the work was just mentally translating chords, which wasn't too bad considering the two instruments differed greatly in heft, sound, and number of strings.
speeding up a bit here - i enjoyed learning guitar and started learning songs with tabs + basic chords. somewhere along the way (at about 17 yrs old) i started trying to write my own songs. i have always loved singing/performing since i was a little kid - writing, too - so as soon as i started writing songs i basically never stopped. it was the perfect medium to express my thoughts and feelings, as well as to combine two art forms i loved dearly. BUT - i still didn't have a lot of confidence in my guitar playing, so i took to trying to teach myself how to make electronic music. i flipped between logic pro x and FL studio, usually combining the two (beats in FL studio, synths/etc via VSTs on logic). somewhere along the way i got good enough at guitar to start recording myself and combined my knowledge to make some kind of weird hodge podge of electronic/acoustic music - i was heavily influenced by my favorite band at the time (now, now) who did the same thing.
let me make something clear: i had no idea what i was doing. i was
playing in the purest sense of the word. the really great thing about some of the music software available today is that the interface allows for that kind of improvisation. there is NOTHING wrong with messing around with virtual knobs and buttons and settings until you get a sound you like. if you can't figure out if it actually 'sounds' good from a production standpoint, you can probably find someone on the internet with enough experience to give you a second opinion. but honestly? i wasn't even doing that. i was just doing what sounded good to me, and what came out was really unique and surprisingly developed. sure, listening back i could have mixed some things better, but i hadn't really developed an ear for things like that. it was just about what sounds i could make with these limited materials. and having fun!! i wasn't trying to be a popstar or anything. i just did it for the love of the game, same as i do now.
that music in question was released a LONG time ago, and now sits in a vault forever, because, well...i'm transmasc and have been on T for over 3 years now and cannot bear to hear my voice pre-T lol. just before i came out i had an entire album written and was just about to record it, then, uh...well, you can imagine. going on hormones, and the accompanying voice drop (which took about a year and a half to settle, aka stabilize enough that i could sing ANYTHING without my voice breaking) forced me to take a break from singing outside of the vocal exercises i committed to doing daily. even though this sucked and i hated that i couldn't keep recording the songs i'd written, this had a great advantage in forcing me to get better at guitar. i'm actually very grateful for this time in retrospect - i would have probably continued at an amateur level otherwise.
now, all of that to say - i hope you can see, at least from my example, that there is no one way to go about learning music. and one thing i've learned from working with actual producers/sound engineers/other musicians is that a TON of people taught themselves music in nontraditional ways, and it's not a barrier to creating music collaboratively OR on your own. if you can put some sounds together in a way that sounds good to you, you can make music! it can be as simple or as complex as you want. there's truly no limits and please don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.
since you mentioned you wanted to make instrumental music, here is my number one recommendation: get a midi keyboard if you don't already have one. this will be a game changer for you. i highly recommend the akai mpk mini, which is kind of known as the generic beginner midi keyboard - but only because its price and simplified interface make it so accessible. if $80 is steep for you (i get it, trust me) then you MAY be able to find a similar midi keyboard secondhand. but i'll always recommend shelling out for the mpk because it's plug-and-play, so you don't have to worry about downloading a driver or whatever like you might for some older midi keeb models.
the great thing about midi keyboards is that you really don't even need to know how to play a traditional piano or even what the notes are to use it. i mean, knowing the notes on the keyboard kind of HELPS, lol, but it's not totally necessary. just listen to what you're playing and put some notes together that sound good and at some point you might have a melody. also working with midi notes in any program is great bc you can record a note and then adjust it to your liking in the DAW, so if you hit a wrong key it only takes seconds to fix.
additionally: just from my experience, FL studio is a great program to start with! it might not be free, but, um...it
could be. ifyouknowwhatimean. that's all i'm gonna say.
anyway, there's LOADS of tutorials on youtube. same with logic pro x - and you can find an insane amount of VSTs to download. synth1 is a personal favorite; i love that you can download other people's patches and use them.
ok, this got long, as i expected...i'll leave you with this advice: like any skill, learning to play music (and songwriting) takes time. you're probably not going to like the first batch of things you create. it's important to keep trying at all costs - you will eventually start to notice the incremental improvements! my favorite songwriting advice to give to people is just to write a LOT, knowing that there's a chance 50-70% will probably be horrific flaming garbage. i write a lot of horrific flaming garbage, but i don't let it get to me because i know it's just a part of the process of creating - i have to disengage my inner critic when it comes to just getting ideas down. figure out what bothers you about it, DON'T DELETE IT, but do move onto the next thing with that lesson learned. it takes time! be kind to yourself and enjoy the process.
if have any additional questions for me, please let me know! i'm happy to share all that i can.
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