Ableton has an excellent book called Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers. You can read sample chapters from the book HERE.
The sample chapters are more than enough to get you started, and it has some great tips which address problems of starting, progressing, and finishing tracks.
If you don’t have time to check out the book, try this exercise to get you started using any DAW or beatmaking app:
- Select any tempo and make a 2 bar drum loop. You can use a sequencer, MIDI piano roll, or live play it on your keyboard/drum pad–just do whatever is easiest for now.
- When making your drum loop start with the lowest pitch first–the bass/kick drum. Then add the snare/clap, and then the hihat/shaker.
- Add any other percussion (e.g. toms, crash etc.) you want to create variation or fills.
- Use this drum loop as the foundation for adding/recording the other layers of your track.
- Later you can duplicate the drum loop and create sections for an arrangement by muting/removing certain parts of your drum loop or adding other percussion/fills.
Remember to have fun and don’t overthink the beginning process. Keep your ears open and follow new ideas as you start to hear them.
Michael Ferraro 