Music making is something I'm very interested in and love doing. I began by first learning violin and guitar and picked up other instruments over the years. My major at University of North Texas was music composition for a period before I switched and ultimately graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science in 2008. I played violin in orchestra for 7 years, played guitar in several bands for some more years. I also sang in choirs and learned a lot of music theory and done a lot of ear training. I spent a summer at Berklee College of Music in Boston and learned music theory from a totally different perspective. I know a lot about music theory, composition, and instruments and I would love to talk more about it.
I enjoy jamming and improvising, collaborating, live looping in many styles including rock, metal, blues, jazz, and classical. I have gone through many instruments over the years, but at the moment I currently have a few including the list below.
Other relevant things:
I have some music online under the name Electropunk Zero and Viomangui. I've lost more compositions than I've kept over the years with old tapes, sheet music, and CDs getting lost.
If you want to work with audio programmatically there are many software libraries available.
Digital Audio Workstations are powerful composition tools for creating complex songs and arranging multiple instruments.
Sound editors are not intended to be large composition tools like a DAW but focused more on editing sound files and adding effects. Perfect for creating samples from a recording, adding reverb to some audio, and things like that. You can also use it to generate chirps, noise, tones, and rhythm tracks (like a metronome).
There are a few notable effects you can apply:
VST instruments are common for use in DAWs. VST instruments are very powerful and can be heavily tweaked. Some are synthesizers and some sound like real pianos. There are free ones out there, but there are also very expensive ones ranging into the hundreds and even thousands of dollars for the high quality realistic sounding pianos and drums.
To install a VST, it's usually as simple as placing the .vst file into the right directory. Your DAW settings should specify where it is expecting VST files to reside.
SoundFonts (.sf2) provide you different instrument sounds like VST, but unlike VST they are not sythesized, they are a collection of PCM samples. Soundfonts are easier to use than VST but can take up a lot of space since they are real audio samples.
There are some free Soundfonts on https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/ that include some great pianos, guitars, violins, flutes, etc. Download the .sf2 file.
To use the Soundfonts in LMMS, use the Sf2 Player instrument and then open its options. Select the File and pick the .sf2 file. Then choose the Patch which is the specific instrument. There may also be multiple Bank each with a set of patches. Some Soundfont files come with dozens of instrument patches so you can download one .sf2 file and have a ton of instruments available from it.
Akai MPK mini is a great one. Korg Kross 88 is another great one. You can use Arduinos to make custom instruments. See the NeoTrellis and others.
You can find free music and sounds at https://freesound.org. Everything from samples to background music for video games.
To get started in LMMS, I recommend creating a bunch of instruments using Nescaline. Then tweak each of them to be different “instruments”. This plugin replicates the NES sound system. When you view the controls, there will be 4 channels. These correspond to the 4 channels NES had: 2 square waves, 1 triangle wave, and 1 noise (random). NES also had 1 channel for PCM samples though that's incorporated here.
To setup Nescaline to act like an instrument, I recommend unchecking all 4 channels and then only turning on 1 of the first 3. Get sounds you like. For percussion and sweeps, you can use the 4th channel. You can mix and match if you want. Play with the other settings, but the most notable one is the ENV (envelope). This will let you control the attack/sustain/release to make more plucky sounds.
Create 2-4 instruments like: percussion, bass, rhythm plucks, lead. Maybe you want to add more like some pads and risers.
Create the structure of the song (e.g. AABA, optionally with intro/outro, where A is a verse/pre/chorus and B is bridge)
Start filling in lines. You may find a bass line to build around, you might find a melody that you turn into a motif. You can use your keyboard as a midi piano if necessary or use the piano roll. Build up the song layer by layer until you are happy with it. Keep it simple though. I recommend 2-4 instruments and keep the melody, bass, and rhythm SIMPLE. You can always add complexity later when you're more comfortable.