Learn basic piano/keyboard and basic music theory. Connect those two together. Learn songs you like! Listen to songs you like! Find out why you like them? Learn that! That's how you learn to make music; study others! Look for transferable structures and patterns in the music... how's the rhythm, how's chord progression, how's the melody?

Apart from that. Stay consistent. Buy a course, find a youtuber, or even better find a mentor in real life to guide you (that's the best thing you can do). It's easy to get lost on the internet. Don't forget the most important.. Have fun :) Good luck with you musical journey!

If you have a Mac, open up GarageBand, and start experimenting with Apple loops. Watch YouTube videos about getting started with GarageBand along with it. Get a MIDI keyboard after watching YouTube videos about getting a MIDI keyboard (note, until you do, there is an onscreen keyboard in GarageBand you can use for Software Instruments.)

Make up tunes in your head. Get them into GarageBand via the onscreen or real MIDI keyboard. Use Apple loops as your back-up band, perhaps. Note for the green-colored Software Instrument loops, you can use the Piano Roll and Score Editors to examine and change notes of those loops.

You could get a free Tone Gym account also (sister site to Sound Gym that deals with theory and ear training.) Watch YouTube videos/google about Tone Gym and Sound Gym are about. Pay for them if you are interested.

Keep in mind, when you outgrow the free-on-Mac Garageband, you can purchase the professional level Logic Pro for $199. It has everything you already used in Garageband and an whole lot more.

This is a very large debate. Many will say to take courses with theory, others by looking at what others are doing, and others will advise you to trust your instinct. For my part, since the beginning I have only followed my heart and my feelings. I didn't buy a synthesizer I was advised to buy because I had a crush on another one, and I never regretted it (it's the same thing for software etc.) I had academic lessons and also self-taught. The academic way brings rigor and knowledge of what you are doing. The self-taught way, allows you to discover yourself and become who you really are. Following your instinct and your heart simply in what makes you vibrate the most can be beneficial to you and in parallel take some academic courses to clarify all that =) But there are so many different paths, that the only judge in the end is what you will decide in your heart. Have fun with music!

As someone who started making music a couple months ago, I recommend allowing yourself to explore. There's so many different avenues you can go down; if you want to be a producer, you could learn specifics of vocal production, beatmaking, mixing and mastering, etc. Allow yourself to explore what all you can do in your journey and with each project. For YT channels, some I watch are LANDR, Alex Rome, ANDREW
HUANG, Dillon XO, and Annie Dang. Listen to what everyone else already commented too! It's good advice. Good luck, and have fun!

Firstly, dont fall into the youtube trap of watching more about making music than actually making music.
If you watch Youtube, use a pen and paper and actually get something out of it.
I said this the other day to someone on a similar question, but my main advice for newcomers is to work out what you like and dislike about music and especially focus on what you dislike and dont want to include in your music.
You can get bogged down for years frivolously trying different styles and sounds to find you didnt really love that kind of music in the first place and was just doing it because other people do. Or youtubers tell you this is the cool way or the cool chords... Find your own things in music you enjoy and love them.
Nerd out hard about your favourite artists and borrow chords, melody types and sounds from them and draw a line in the sand and dont cross it for chords, melody types, lyrics and sounds you dont like.
This narrows your focus to where you dont have unlimited choices when you sit to make music. You have a few choices and they are good ones and you can form different shapes with them like lego.
Dont try to learn it all straight away. Just make music first and enjoy it. After a while you will find out where your weaknesses are and then watch videos or read books about improving those specific areas. Its not a race.
You can start out with basic music theory if you like, or learn it when you run into road blocks down the track. You can make very fine music without it if you are dedicated and enjoying your own process, and for some people it just confuses their process and even limits their creativity initially and for others its totally helpful.
Just dont feel like you have to learn it all for years before you even start.
Just have fun and try to emulate your idols until you find your own voice in theirs. To learn, that is the best method.

I would also say that soundgym is something that I have come to after years of production.
And its quite helpful to mixing music...
But mixing music is meaningless if youre beginning making music and cant arrange music.
Its can be like jumping ahead and learning calculus when you're still needing to understand arithmetic. Youre overwhelming yourself instead of learning things in stages.
There are situations where this isnt true, and people can be quite advanced musically from the beginning if they have a great ear from years of listening intently, or work in genres that have more basic arrangements or work with samples and templates and can arrive at the point where there music needs to be mixed earlier.
Like, punk music for example, you could potentially nut out how it works quite quickly and then need to know how to mix it...
But usually, with pop, rock or anything inbetween or on the fringes of those real mixing starts (and sometimes ends) with great arranging and thats where you should focus your efforts when beginning.
For example my girlfriend has no idea how to mix, but makes incredible music and releases it virtually unmixed, as her arrangements are genius and the music works as a whole brilliantly and sounds good without the added sheen on top.
She can play and understands a variety of instruments very well though and how they work and record together.
Arranging sounds in your music to fill out the frequency spectrum and having things sit nicely in their ranges creates natural separation.
If you can do this already then learning mixing will greatly improve your music further.
If you cant create nice arrangements that work and create a good sounding track naturally by using different tones, timbres and putting instruments in different ranges and octaves then no amount of mixing will help your music.
You dont necessarily need music theory to learn this (though it could help) but you do need hours of making music to understand where things sit and what works and what doesnt.
For example, Im talking about not having higher register bass notes in a track with lower register piano and guitar notes (this might work in some situations but generally speaking and to make this point, it usually will clash the instruments together).
You could mix your way out of it of course if that is the grungier lower register sound youre going for... (maybe like the cure who use a lot of instruments in that low mid range - ... although their music is arranged outstandingly...), or you could learn to make the instruments sit together right in the first place...
I would listen to a good arrangement thats balanced properly but not even slightly mixed as a finished product, over a poorly constructed song with production through the wazoo anyday.
Learn to make music, then learn how to mix it once you have some music that needs mixing (or pay someone else to do it while you're still learning), then repeat the process over and over and over as you will never be finished haha.
But this is just something to consider and I wish I followed this advice when I started as I overwhelmed myself with things I thought I needed to know or learn to make my music better, when really when I started, the music quality was the problem in the first place.

Thank you so much everyone. This has been really helpful in directing me and honestly taking a load off my shoulders. I really appreciate every tip and advice.

No worries. A great youtube site is ear opener. Check that out for the arranging videos