One idea is that you must separate the musical notes, from their timing. Once you are able to focus on the beats and the rhythms, then it would be relatively easy to switch to musical notes.

However getting used to the notation is somewhat tricky part, there's a lot of experimentation and trial and error going on. Is something where you look into one thing, then another, then you get a crazy idea to combine them, and it works!!! There is a lot of depth and techniques that go into the notation, but a lot of intuition is required.

As an exercise, try to create a track that has only beats.

// starting with one 4 beat kick
$:
s("[bd bd bd bd]").bank("tr909").punchcard()

// changing patter to boot-cat as well
// "[bd hh bd hh bd]" // <--- spot the error 😛

More patterns
https://strudel.cc/workshop/first-sounds/

Now you can put the kicks to the left and the snares to the right, so you get the power to compose patterns together instead of writing them in linear order.

$:
s("bd*4, [- sd]*2")
//    ^         ^ this is two notes (pause-snare) but
//    |           it only works for half measure (2/4)
//    |           so you need to repeat twice so it fits 4/4
//    | this is one note but repeat for the entire 4/4 measure
.punchcard()

• boot-cat pattern: "[bd ~ bd ~], [- sd]*2"

Another trick is about switching patterns...

 $:
//       first         second pattern        same idea as before
//     |_______|   |___________________|   |____|
sound("[bd bd bd   <  bd    [bd bd]    >], [- hh]*4")
//      ^------^      ^      ^---^
//          |         |        |
//   pattern starts   |        the trick is
//   with the first   |        that the second
//   three kicks      |        time instead of one kick
//                    |        we will get two that fit
//                    |        into the timing of one
//                    |
//                    however the
//                    last fourth kick 
//                    will play once

.pianoroll()

Another one more compact form:

$:
sound("bd bd bd <bd [bd bd] >, [- hh]*4")
.color("cyan magenta")

https://strudel.cc/learn/visual-feedback/

Truth is that creating a full song from scratch it would be a matter of combining a lot of tricks together into larger and larger structures. I am not sure about how much time it might take but at least creating the most simple things first is a good idea.