5 Ways Anyone Can Create Songs Digitally Without Music Skills

While everyone listens to music, some become musicians and composers, while many dream of doing it too. In the digital age, it’s entirely possible to create your own song using a plethora of tools – none of which require prior musical skills.

1 Provision of free samples

One of the best ways to create a song for the first time with no musical skills is to work with samples.

There can be many samples. These can be audio snippets or MIDI (a type of communication used to create music using computer technology) and can contain bits of melody, chords, bass lines, SFX, drum hits, you name it.

When creating digital music, samples are an essential element that is 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 entire libraries of samples that you can use to build your first track.

Think of them as a box of Legos of all different colors, shapes and sizes. You can take these blocks or samples and create a unique song structure. We have a whole list of websites where you can find both free and paid samples and browsing them can turn up real treasures.

You can use free software like Audacity to create music, which has a long-standing and trusted reputation as a great audio editor. Drag and drop samples into the session to start creating your song. Getting started with music can be so easy.

It’s also worth knowing that you can get tons of free samples in a music app or software, and the process still takes. I’ll highlight different applications in the following sections, but in most cases you’ll be arranging samples in one way or another—a process that doesn’t require musical skill, but will require you to listen and judge what sounds good. !

2 Playing with Beat Makers

Tackling the whole business of creating a song, from laying down a smooth beat to writing catchy vocal hooks, can be daunting. So if you’re looking for a great place to start that doesn’t require any prior musical knowledge, then start making a beat.

Smartphones are so powerful these days that a computer is no longer needed to produce quality sound. We’ve tried out how to make beats using just your phone, and they can turn out to be pretty close to what the pros can do in the studio. You can listen below.

There are a number of beat making mobile apps that make the most of the portability, processing and convenience of your phones to give you your own little studio on the go. Many also focus on a great user-friendly experience, with features that automatically handle loops and offer your preset beats to get you started.

If you prefer your music journey through your computer rather than your phone, Apple users can try GarageBand, which is available for free. There’s a cool feature called Drummer that generates full-length beats to fit under a track or stand alone.

The Drummer feature in GarageBand takes a dynamic approach and adapts to the genre of music you’re creating. It also allows you to tweak the groove and add or subtract rhythm parts such as kick, snare or hi-hats.

Whether you choose the mobile or desktop version of the beat maker, the bottom line is that you won’t need any drumming experience to create your first song.

3 Using an online DAW

Online digital audio workstations (DAWs) represent a recent development in music technology. What used to be possible only if you downloaded a hefty piece of software and had a decently powerful audio processing computer is now packaged into lightweight online applications.

Browser DAWs are designed to be user-friendly and 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 as there are completely free options or subscriptions with reasonable fees.

Having tried many browser-based DAWs in the past, I can safely say that it only takes one session to learn the basics, and then you can dive straight into arranging samples into your first tune.

When you’re starting out, it’s helpful to know how the basics of a song are built from a few main ideas. For example, you can start with a bass line, add a chord progression, and then bang the melody over the top.

Ableton, the pro-level DAW creators, have a free step-by-step guide to learn how to create a song. I would highly recommend checking it out, especially since everything is also done right in your browser.

Take what you learn and apply it to playing on an online DAW. Also check out the pre-made loops and sample libraries 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 of 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.

For those who don’t yet have the skills to write melodies and harmonies, 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 chords on a timeline and layer them to create a song.

Even more exciting is that they come with virtual instruments already installed. Imagine digital pianos or full-fledged synthesizers used in dance and electronic music. Everything is controlled using a computer keyboard, so you don’t need any specialized hardware or physical skills.

Once you learn how to insert pre-made music snippets into your sessions, you can start playing and recording music using virtual instruments.

While music theory helps, it’s mostly about using your ears and playing something that sounds good with the rest of the song. I would encourage anyone looking to create their first song to jump straight into using a beginner DAW.

5 Using AI music generators

The most convenient way you can try to create a song is to use the AI ​​music generator. Thanks to complex AI models, they can produce a song wholesale with just a few descriptive words as input.

Suno and Udio are two companies that aim to help anyone start making music with no musical skills required. We used Suno to create the song, which you can listen to below.

The process was divided into several non-technical steps. You start by creating a single segment of the song using a text prompt to describe what kind of music you want to generate. There is also space to add texts.

The results can be interesting but difficult to replicate, so if you don’t like the sound, the only option is to generate a whole new snippet instead of editing individual instruments or individual lines of the melody.

Completing the entire composition requires patience. You’ll need to add these segments together to make it flow musically, which can be frustrating with few basic gameplay options.

No matter how complex the AI ​​model powering Suno is, music is an equally complex beast. Connecting the segments and completing the clip, which sounds like a confident end to the song, is mostly left to chance.

There is an amazing array of tools, apps, DAWs, sample libraries, beat makers, virtual instruments and much more in the digital realm. They make it much easier than ever to start creating a song. Try them out and you might find a new passion for making music.