How to make music even if you know nothing about it!

Back in the day, if you wanted to make music, you had to learn an instrument and you could only play that instrument by itself. So if you wanted a full sounding song you needed other people with other instruments to play along with you. However this changed once audio recording became a thing because now people had the opportunity to learn multiple instruments, record them playing each one and then piece them together. However in todays day and age, making music has become easier than ever!

Today making music is so easy that anyone can do it without any knowledge of instruments or music theory. With the power of new production software and the thousands of YouTube tutorials available, it's almost too easy to learn how to make music.
(Trust me, YouTube is going to be your best friend in this)

What if I told you that you could learn to play any instrument you wanted from the guitar to the piano to drums without picking any of them up or physically having them?
Well today that is possible. With my knowledge I've gained I can play basically any instrument in the world from my laptop. Disclaimer: This will not teach you how to play the actual guitar or other instruments, this is specifically for producing music on a computer.

So if you want to get started making music today all you need is a computer/laptop and a music production software. You can use any software you like however I use Fruity Loops Studio 12 and I think it's one of the best beginner/advanced programs ever created.

Now you do have to pay for this software, however there may just be some ways to get it for free if you look hard enough (;

Once you have downloaded your software you are all ready to go! One thing I recommend doing is going online and looking for MIDI files. These are premade melodies that you can drag and drop into your software and the melody will be done for you. Now all you have to do is choose your instrument and you're already halfway done!

Now of course this isn't actually making your own song, but Midi files can really help show you the structure of chords and melodies. There is also Midi files for drums so you can piece together an entire song without actually making the beat/melodies yourself!

Once you have played around with midi files, now is the time to make music on your own. If you have no knowledge of music theory, then you are in luck because FL studio has a little shortcut that shows you any scale you want. A scale is a set of notes that sound good when played together.

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In the piano roll, you will see this toolbar on the top right. If you click the circle with lines through the middle of it a drop down will appear with all the different scales and will show you chords too!
The main 2 scales you will want to start out with are the Major scale and the Aeolian scale (Minor Scale).

The Major is scale creates a happy and joyful kind of sound while the Minor scale (Aeolian) creates a more sad/emotional sound.

Now if I were to teach you how to create melodies/chord progressions with words, well that would just take way to long. So I recommend heading over to YouTube to fully learn how to create melodies.

Drums are actually the easiest part of all of this. Mainly because most drum patterns are very simple and the drum sequencer in FL Studio makes it very easy.
The stock drums that come with FL Studio aren't the best but you can make them work depending on the genre.
YouTube has plenty of Free drum kits that you can download.

I hope this article helped you get started in music production or inspired you to get started. I make music every day and it is my passion. If you have any other tips feel free to leave a comment! And if you get started and are confused reach out to me and I will do what I can to help! But don't forget about YouTube...seriously it's the best classroom in the world.