Not necessary to play an instrument, you only need to "play" the sequencer although you would certainly need a MIDI controller just to input notes. Playing the piano of course would be helpful but it's not like you are going to play synthwave music with your 10 fingers.
For basic music theory I like Nahre Sol's book "The Elements of Music" which is affordable and basically all you need to jumpstart.
Your next best source are Youtube tutorials where people "reconstruct" the songs you like i.e. you need to begin by mimicking the music you like with the soft synths they use combined with some production/mixing techniques knowledge. Alice Yalcin puts quite a lot of stuff at Youtube. And what's not to love from other channels like Bad Gear, Alex Ball or DrMix! After some months you will become familiar to what the different synths are capable of doing and even recognize the sounds from other people sounds ("that's a Juno!" "that's an Emulator!" "that's a 909!") and you will build your software arsenal around that, maybe even getting some hardware that adapts to your preferred workflow.
Me, I'm a Logic Pro + Korg hardware workstation person but I may or may not spend most of my weekends TV time watching these Youtube channels.
For basic music theory I like Nahre Sol's book "The Elements of Music" which is affordable and basically all you need to jumpstart.
Your next best source are Youtube tutorials where people "reconstruct" the songs you like i.e. you need to begin by mimicking the music you like with the soft synths they use combined with some production/mixing techniques knowledge. Alice Yalcin puts quite a lot of stuff at Youtube. And what's not to love from other channels like Bad Gear, Alex Ball or DrMix! After some months you will become familiar to what the different synths are capable of doing and even recognize the sounds from other people sounds ("that's a Juno!" "that's an Emulator!" "that's a 909!") and you will build your software arsenal around that, maybe even getting some hardware that adapts to your preferred workflow.
Me, I'm a Logic Pro + Korg hardware workstation person but I may or may not spend most of my weekends TV time watching these Youtube channels.