Understanding the Camera Settings on Your Phone: What Each Feature Does Quick LinksArranging Free Samples Playing With Beat Makers Using Online DAWs Starting With Beginner-Friendly DAWs Using AI Music Generators Key Takeaways Creating a song with no musical skills is possible using free samples and tools like Audacity. Make beats on your phone with user-friendly apps or try GarageBand on a computer. Beginner-friendly DAWs and AI music generators offer entry points to creating music effortlessly. ✕ Remove Ads
While everyone listens to music, some go on to be musicians and composers, while many are left dreaming about whether they could do it too. Well, in the digital age, it's entirely possible to create your own song using a plethora of tools -- none of which need prior musical skills.
1 Arranging Free Samples
One of the best ways to create a song for the first time, with no musical skills at hand, is to work with samples.
Samples can be many things. They can be snippets of audio or MIDI (a type of communication used to create music with computer technology), and they can contain bits of melody, chords, bass lines, SFX, drum hits, you name it.
When making digital music, samples are a core element that are used throughout the process. These building blocks can be layered, arranged, cut, and shaped to create a song. The best part is that there are whole libraries of samples out there that you can use to build your first track.
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Think of them like a box of Lego of all different colors, shapes, and sizes. You can take these blocks, or samples, and build a unique song structure. We have an entire list of websites where you can find free and paid samples and sifting through them can produce some real treasures.
You can use free software like Audacity to make music, which holds a longstanding, trustworthy reputation as a great audio editor. Drag and drop your samples into the session and move them around to start creating a song. Getting started with music can be that easy.
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It's also worth knowing that you can get troves of free samples within a music app or software too, and the process still stands. In the following sections, I will highlight different apps, but in most cases, you'll be arranging samples in one way or another -- a process that doesn't require musical skills but will need you to listen and pass judgment on what sounds good!
2 Playing With Beat Makers
Tackling the whole business of making a song, from laying down a slick rhythm to writing catchy vocal hooks, can be daunting. So if you're looking for a great place to start that requires no prior musical knowledge, then start with making a beat.
Smartphones are so powerful these days that producing quality audio doesn't require a computer anymore. We've tried our hand at making beats using just a phone, and they can turned out pretty close to what professionals can do in a studio. You can listen below.
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There are a number of beat-making mobile apps that make the most of your phones' portability, processing, and convenience, to give you your own little studio on-the-go. Many of them aim for a great user-friendly experience too, with features that automatically handle looping and offer your preset rhythms to get you started.
If you prefer taking your musical journey via your computer and not your phone, Apple users can check out GarageBand, which is available for free. There's a great feature called Drummer that generates full-length beats to fit underneath a song or on its own.
GarageBand's Drummer features takes a dynamic approach, adapting to fit the genre of music you're creating. It also allows you to tweak the groove and add or subtract parts of the beat like the kick, snare, or hi-hats.
Whether you opt for the mobile or computer version of a beat maker, the bottom line is you won't need any drumming experience to create your first song.
✕ Remove Ads 3 Using Online DAWs
Online digital audio workstations (DAWs) are a recent evolution of music technology. What used to be only possible if you downloaded a hefty piece of software and had a decently powerful computer to run audio processing, is now packaged into light-weight online apps.
Browser-based DAWs are designed to be user-friendly, appealing to anyone who is curious about making beats or tracks, but has never used audio software before. As such, the barrier to entry is low with completely free options available or subscriptions with reasonable fees.
Having tried out many browser-based DAWs in the past, I can say confidently that it will take you as little as one session to learn the basics, and then you can jump right into arranging samples into your first tune.
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When you're starting out, it's helpful to know how the fundamentals of a song are built from just a few main ideas. For example, you can start with a bass line, add a chord progression, and then bang on a melody over the top.
Ableton, the makers of the pro-level DAW, have a free step-by-step guide to learning how to make a song. I would highly recommend checking it out, especially as everything is also done right inside your browser.
Take what you learn and use it to play around on an online DAW. Look for the premade loops and sample libraries as well and try arranging them into a little song for yourself.
4 Starting With Beginner-Friendly DAWs
Even without any musical knowledge, you can definitely start making music using a digital audio workstation, or DAW software.
The likes of Garage Band -- the beginner-friendly sibling to the famous Logic Pro software -- or DAWs like Cakewalk and Fruity Loops, have inspired countless people to start creating songs and learning about music production.
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For those who don't have the skill to write melodies and harmonies yet, they come with fantastic sample libraries and loops. It's really easy to learn how to arrange these snippets of melodies, bass lines, riffs, or chord progressions on a timeline, layering them up to create a song.
What's even more exciting is that they come with virtual instruments already installed. Think digital pianos or fully-fledged synthesizers used in dance and electronic music. Everything is controlled using your computer keyboard, so there's no specialized hardware you need nor physical skills required here.
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Once you've got the hang of dropping pre-made music snippets into your sessions, then you have the ability to start playing and recording music over the top using virtual instruments.
While music theory helps, more often than not, it comes down to using your ears and playing something that sounds good with the rest of the song. I'd encourage anyone who wants to make their first song to jump right into using beginner-friendly DAWs.
5 Using AI Music Generators
The most hands-off way you can try making a song is by using an AI music generator. Powered by complex AI models, they can fabricate a song wholesale with just a few descriptive words as an input.
Suno and Udio are two companies that aim to help anyone start making music with zero musical skill required. We used Suno to create a song, which you can listen to below.
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The process was broken down into a few non-technical steps. You start by creating one segment of the song using a text prompt to describe what kind of music you want to generate. There's room to add lyrics too.
The results can be interesting but difficult to replicate, so when you don't like the sound, your only option is to generate a whole new snippet, instead of being able to edit individual instruments or single lines of melody.
Fleshing out a whole song takes patience. You'll need to add these segments together in way that flows musically, which can be frustrating with just a few rudimentary options to play with.
No matter how complex the AI model powering Suno is, music is equally a complex beast. Linking together segments and finishing on a clip that sounds like the confident end to a song is mostly left to chance.
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There is a wonderful array of tools, apps, DAWs, sample libraries, beat makers, virtual instruments, and much more out there in the digital realm. They make it far easier to start creating a song than ever before. Give them a try, and you might just find a new passion for making music.
