I'd be glad to help you out if you have any specific questions. I've been producing for like 4 or 5 years, produce all different genres.
my advice is decide what genre you want to make, look up the right tempo, punch that into your DAW (logic, fl studio, ableton live, garageband, reason), get yourself some drum hit samples (stay away from loops unless you are chopping them up). Arrange a drum beat, it's good to add random little unique samples into the beat to fill it out, you don't want to do too much since like the dude above me said less is more.
look up some chords, decide what key you want to use. the key is usually the root note or the first note of the second bar or the 5th-9th quarter note. come up with a simple 4 note 4 bar melodie such as C-C-C-C-G-G-G-G-D-D-D-D-A-A-A-A throughout 8 bars. experiment with putting the notes on the offbeat of the kick drum, you want the bassline to fill out the beat. the key for that bassline in that example would be gM. your going to need to learn at least a little bit about music theory to do this, you can play it by ear but the simple fact is theory exists for a reason and things that are theoretically correct tend to sound better. if you play 3 notes and the 4th note sounds bad, it's out of key, make a note not to play that note again in that song. once you have a 4 note bassline it's easy to make synths and piano lines and all that based on that bass line.
decide if you want a happy sound or sad sound. happy is major, and what makes it major is whats called a major third. triad chords play a role here, try making a simple triad chord by playing a C, an E, and a G. this is a C major chord, same goes for other root notes. you can mix it up and play E, G, and then a C in the next octave. Anyways so with the example of a cmajor chord the C is the root note, the G is what's called a 5th, and it's 7 half steps higher than the root note. Now this is where the major and minor come in, the note in the middle is called a third, a major third or a minor third. this you kind of have to play by ear, because different notes the third is a different number of half steps. if you want to make that chord a minor chord, you simply drop the third down a half step. for example instead of C, E, G it would be C, Dsharp, G. the same goes for when you are playing the black notes.
now that will get you on your way to making nice chords, when using pads I recommend always using chords, they sound more full and just all around better sounding. once you have some chords figured out you are well on your way to making melodies. a melody can be made simply by alternating between notes in a chord, but not playing them at the same time. since most melodies have more than 3 notes in them you can play those 3 notes and then see what doesn't sound bad when you play it after them. you can also look up the scale for the particular key you are using, and alternate between those notes. in general you want the first note to be the same after 8 bars, that creates a satisfying sound because peoples brain wants the melody to return back to where it started. think of a melody as a journey through the different tones and then returning home.
drums are pretty self explanatory since you can basically duplicate the programming of your favorite songs and then switch it up to sound how you want it. in general with the exception of breakcore, dance music is 4/4. a variation you often find in dubstep and hardstyle is called the shuffle or triplets, a variation of the tuplet. this is still 4/4 but the difference is you divide your quarter notes (usually, you can stretch em out as long as you want) into 3 notes instead of 4. so it's One two three One two three instead of One two three four etc. a shuffle is when you take out the middle note so it's kick____kicksnare. listen to some dubstep you'll see what I'm talking about. this rhythm is nice to use because it's unique and fun to dance to, but keep in mind with certain genres such as drum and bass and hardcore (uk) it's more of a novelty than anything else. in most music triplets are used scarcely to create variation.
anyways, this should help unless you already play instruments and know all this, in which case I'l feel like an idiot. if you want to check out my music for examples feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions on how I made any sounds. I reccomend getting the DMS electro house sample pack, the drum samples are versatile and via layering and time stretching you can turn them into any genre you want. here's my soundcloud in case you want to see what kind of music I make and hit me up with any questions
http://soundcloud.com/zale
most important thing, get creative.