vent post (sorry if this isn't allowed)

You don't have to know music theory beyond the basics to make music- Kikuo never learned, and he's one of the most acclaimed Vocasynth producers of all time.
Reaper has a free trial with all the features. You can use it for as long as you want, too, since the trial also never expires.
You don't have to write songs in Japanese.

Never give up! If you try as hard as you can and watch enough tutorials, you'll find yourself improving quicker than you can comprehend.

(but just a recommendation, you should learn at least basic basic music theory and audio engineering because it does help a lot)

Sometimes you just have to accept that things take longer than you want them to.
I took a little under 3 years to complete my first cover in SynthV since I was really paranoid about using usts/svps from other people at the time. I kept getting upset over that the notes were wrong (Didn't figure out what key signatures were until like 6 months in...), my brain just couldn't distinguish higher notes from lower ones and the timing was all over the place too.
And now, 5 years since I first started doing something related to music, I get praise from my teachers over songs I've composed myself (They have pretty low standards, but who cares I'm trying to prove a point).

Sometimes the first step to understanding something is the longest (Hopefully not like 3 years for you) but if you really enjoy or want something and keep coming back to it you will be able to make something eventually.


Forms of art in general are very hard to comprehend when you don't know how to express them yet. Many people tend to look at things like music and believe that natural talent has a much bigger part of it than what it actually has. It can be really easy to look at what someone else has done and think that they've practiced it since they were younger so it clicked better or that they've had more oppurtunities than you had to get this far. But what most people don't realize is that most artists (at least the ones I know) have felt this frustration, like a lot.