How to start making music: a beginner's roadmap

Want to make your own music but not sure where to start? The short answer: a computer with enough RAM, one music program (a DAW), a pair of honest-sounding headphones — and the habit of finishing one small piece of music every week. You do not need music theory or an instrument first. This is the route the music production teachers at Muse Inc in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) suggest to complete beginners. Updated 2026.

In short

• The minimum: a computer with 8 GB of RAM or more, a DAW and studio headphones. Monitors, an audio interface and a MIDI keyboard can wait.
• Ableton Live, FL Studio and BandLab will all get you started; what matters is picking one and sticking with it.
• First 30 days: drums → bassline → chords → structure and export.
• Take lessons when you need someone to listen and correct you, not because you ran out of tutorials.

What you need to start

A computer

Laptop or desktop, Windows or macOS — all fine. Ableton's help centre lists 8 GB of RAM as the minimum for Live 12 and recommends 16 GB for typical music production. If you have 8 GB, start anyway; when projects get heavy, close the browser and other apps before you think about upgrading. An SSD with room for a sample library makes projects open faster.

Headphones or studio monitors

Start with headphones. Apartments in a busy city are rarely quiet or acoustically treated, so a pair of studio headphones (flat sound, no boosted bass) gives you a more trustworthy picture than speakers pushed against a wall. Monitors come later, once you have a settled workspace — see 5 tips for setting up a proper home studio and the studio monitors in our store.

Audio interface and MIDI keyboard

An audio interface (sound card) matters when you record vocals or instruments or connect monitors — not in week one. When you need one, browse audio interfaces in our store. A MIDI keyboard makes melodies quicker to play in, but drawing notes with the mouse in the piano roll works fine.

Choosing a DAW: Ableton Live, FL Studio or BandLab

A DAW (digital audio workstation) is the software you record, arrange, mix and export in — more in what is a DAW. The three beginners ask about most:

• Ableton Live: Session View lets you try loops side by side very quickly, its audio handling is flexible, and it sits close to how DJs and electronic producers work. There is a free trial.
• FL Studio: strong pattern programming and piano roll, popular with beatmakers. It has a trial version too.
• BandLab: free and runs in the browser and on phones — good for sketching ideas and finding out whether you enjoy producing, but sooner or later you will want a desktop DAW for detailed mixing.

The Muse Inc production courses are taught in Ableton Live because it connects directly to a DJ's work: edits, remixes, stems and DJ versions. But do not spend a month comparing software. Audio, MIDI, EQ and compression work the same way in every DAW, so what you learn in one carries over.

Your first 30 days, week by week

Thirty to sixty minutes a day beats one all-nighter at the weekend. Aim to finish one file each week, however short.

Week 1: drums

Build an 8-bar loop with kick, clap or snare and hi-hats. Pick a track you love as a reference, listen to where the kicks land and how busy the hats are, and copy the feel. Nudge a few hi-hats off the grid and hear how the groove changes.

Week 2: bassline

Choose a key (A minor, say) and write a bassline using only a few notes of that scale. Let the bass dodge the kick — play in the gaps between kicks — and notice how the low end tightens up.

Week 3: chords and melody

Write a four-chord loop in the same key, then a short melody on top. This is where theory starts paying off: learn exactly what you need for the music in front of you, not the whole textbook.

Week 4: samples, structure and export

Add a sample (a clap, a short vocal phrase), then stretch the 8-bar loop into an arrangement: intro, build-up, drop, breakdown, outro. Export a WAV and play it on headphones, a phone speaker and a car stereo if you can — wherever it sounds very different is what needs fixing.

Four classic beginner mistakes: buying plugins before using the ones you have; monitoring too loud, which tires your ears fast; polishing one 8-bar loop forever and never finishing a track; and chasing loudness before learning to mix.

Teach yourself or take lessons?

Teaching yourself is completely possible — there is no shortage of free material. The hard part is that nobody listens to your track and tells you why the bass is muddy or why the drop does not hit. Lessons are worth it when you notice that you:

• watch lots of tutorials but have not finished a track;
• have plenty of good loops but cannot turn them into songs;
• have mixes that sound fine on headphones and fall apart elsewhere;
• want a plan and deadlines so you do not drop it after a month.

The path at Muse Inc

All our production courses are one-to-one in Ableton Live, in the school's studio with monitors, an audio interface, MIDI controllers and a recording microphone — you do not need to bring a computer to class. Lessons run in English or Vietnamese.

1. Basic Music Production: 9 lessons for complete beginners — rhythm and genres, audio and MIDI, plugins, beats from samples, basic theory, basslines and chord loops, and your first exported track.
2. Music Production Training Program: 39 two-hour lessons over 13 weeks (three a week) in 9 modules, from theory, synthesis and sound design to vocals, mixing and mastering. You finish with your own complete 2:30 song and all its project files.
3. Mixing & Mastering: 10 lessons (7 mixing, 3 mastering) for producers whose finished tracks do not yet sound professional.

Current prices are in the table below; the two short courses are priced on request.

Between lessons you can hire the school's Production Room (Yamaha HS8 monitors, Focusrite interface) for 450,000 VND per hour on the practice room page (rate on 27 October 2026). Curious about the job itself? Read what a music producer does.

Frequently asked questions

Want to see the studio before you decide? Book a free trial lesson — a teacher shows you the studio and helps you pick the right course — or message us on WhatsApp at +84 90 2957 911.