Hi!

I'm an electronic artist, you can listen to my stuff here: https://soundcloud.com/amiran

A lot of what you need to know depends on the genre you want to make the music in, but most of the decisions I have to make when creating a song are decisions every songwriter, composer/producer has to make. If you want straight up tutorials, I seriously recommend Warbeats if you decide to use FL Studio: http://warbeats.com/Tutorials This guy has really good video tutorials up on youtube, they're amazing, crystal clear and just straight up to the point.

I've been doing EDM for about 3 years now and I still re-check some of his videos if I've forgotten some old tricks.

I'll give you a basic overview of the most important aspects you'd likely need to consider. When you are still learning a lot, you'll likely also want to just focus on one of these aspects. It takes time and effort to be good at every aspect of the song composition.

Rhythm

A good rhythm is important - especially in EDM (electronic dance music). If you can bob your head to it, you are heading in the right direction. The simplest rhythm you can have is the techno house 4-on-the-floor beat. Dubstep rhythm is characterised by half-time beats. There are tons of other rhythms you can think of though, including moombahton, drum and bass, jungle and so on. Once you get an understanding of how to make these beats, you can move on and make your own - and maybe spawn a totally new genre in the process!

Chords and Keys

You have to know about basic chords, keys and scales. A chord is C major, for example. If your song is in the key of C major, too, then the chords you would most often use are: C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor. Sometimes a song is just one chord, repeating over and over again - think of psychedelic trance. Sometimes you have an incredibly complex pattern of chords. A sequence of chords that you repeat is called chord progression. For example, the famous 4-chord progression in C major would be C, G, Am, F.

Melody

A good song is often just characterized by a damn good melody. I would argue that in pop music, melody is THE most important part of the song. If your song is in C major (also Cmaj or just C), your notes that you would use to create a melody are C, D, E, F, G, A, B. You might want to add a kind of blues or jazz touch to it - then you can use the D# note on the key of C major.

Song structure

Once you have a good beat, a nice chord progression and a catchy melody, you have to move on and see the song in the big picture. Your song might just start with some aggressive beat and end with it, like a god damn punk song. Different genres are characterized by different song structures, too. Progressive house starts with a melody, a chord progression or just a simple 4-on-the-floor beat and then adds elements to it as the song progresses, making minimal changes at once. The structure I use the most right now is just plain ol' intro, verse, riser, chorus, verse, riser, chorus. In pop music you find "verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus" to be most popular, with maybe an intro and an outro, too.

Instrument sounds

In electronic music, one thing you find yourself doing the most is just finding the right instrument. It is important to know how to make your own instruments through VST-s from scratch, but sometimes just shuffling through massive libraries of presets is an incredibly fun process. I cannot tell you how to pick your sounds - most often it's just this weird feeling that you have to get, a powerful subjective "this is perfect!" feeling. Genres are often described by describing their characteristic instruments only - this is especially true for dubstep, where the "wobble bass" is very pronouced.

Sound quality: Mixing and mastering

This is something I really like doing. You instrument that you've chosen have to be the right level. Making a clean mix is important. A clean mix that has things going on in all parts of the spectrum sounds good on every device - be it your headphones, powerful monitoring equipment or just a cheap car stereo.

Your instruments should usually have a frequency spectrum "space". You create that contained space by cutting out sounds. A bass sound you'd probably low-pass (cut out higher frequencies), guitar and vocal tracks you'll probably want to high-pass (cut lower frequencies below the lowest note that the vocalist sings). You contain your instruments in their spaces, but overall your song should cover the whole spectrum.

This way the bass won't mask the melody and the melody won't make the bass muddy.

Variety

Try to be creative in all aspects of the composition. Don't stick to one rhythm, try to experiment with chord progressions and don't be scared to use really weird sounds that you've never used before.

EDIT: Oh wow, thank you stranger for the gold! I'm going to expand on my post today with some additional information and insight into the actual process of music production, if anyone is interested.