Hey Shaun,
awesome that you want to get started! I will provide you with some important buzz words that will help you with your research. (it is to complicated to put down everything important about starting)
If you want to begin producing, you will at least need a computer & a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) - in other words "a software where you produce your music in". I recommend you try to get a demo first to play around a bit and see you really like it, before purchasing really expensive software. Reading the Manual and watching tutorials on youtube will get you started. The DAWs differ in workflow and built-in sounds and effects. It comes down to personal taste, but the most common used DAWs are ProTools (standard in professional music making), Ableton, Logic, Reason, FL Studio. Just check them out. Some are available in Demo version, some as Light Versions for cheap money. It also depends on which kind of music you want to produce, due to the different built in sounds and effects. Later you can add many new sounds and effects to every DAW as VST-Plugins or AU-Plugins. But every one of the listed DAWs can do that, so at last it doesn't really matter which one you use, except a few workflow differences and personal taste differences.
Learning some Music Theory is certainly a good idea. From basic chords, key scales, to more complex chords and chord progressions. Anyway there are a lot of music producers - especially in electronic music - that don't have a lot of knowledge about music theory and are able to create high end music through their feeling for the music and their talent. In pop, rock, hiphop music most successfull producers do have at least a little music theoretical background.
The best way to start is to listen to a lot of music and to the single parts of the tracks. Then you can try to reproduce beat structures and melodies so you understand how they work. From there you will be able to create new stuff. But you can learn a lot from what is out there.
Keywords you can google to get started:
DAW
VST-Plugins
Samples
Midi
Midi-Keyboard
BPM
Chord Progression
I am really interested in what is your biggest fear/frustration in getting started?
Hope this helps!
Best,
Jeff