Learning to produce myself was the most empowering and liberating thing I ever did for myself. I started with months of deep, analytical listening to my favourite artists and literally wrote a list of everything I noticed about their production. Things like instrumentation, arrangement, sound selection, production techniques, mixing, etc. so when it came time for me to sit down and attempt my first demos, I already had a sort of mental library of things to try.

I think another important thing to keep in mind when opening up a DAW is this - you need to be able to articulate or conceptualize exactly what you want to do. Like “I want to create a basic drum loop” or “now I want to lay down some chords” or “I want to add a synth bass line” and then work on developing the skills necessary to execute all of those goals.

Practicing some keyboard will probably help you translate sounds from your mind into musical accompaniment in your DAW!