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Sound engineering. Most people think sound is somehow sine waves and that's it. And well, that's technically correct on some level, but you can layer sound waves on top of each other to create triangle waves or square waves or what specific instruments happen to sound like:
Source
And well, these aspects have implications. Like with an oboe, even the basic waveform is quite interesting, so it's excellent for solos.
On the other hand, with a more boring sound, like a sine wave, you can do relatively wild things in terms of melody or combining them into intervals, and listeners won't feel overwhelmed as quickly.
And then you've got the fun field of drums. You can often just take white noise (or pink noise etc.) and just make its volume drop off rapidly and that already sounds similar to a drum.
Which is again interesting on the boring/interesting spectrum. That noise signal adds a short moment of chaos into the mix. But then we often make drums play quite structured rhythms to entertain a different boring/interesting spectrum over time.
This is interesting! How can I get into this? Do I have to invest in some equipment or can I just use software to create sounds?
No idea, if there is any guided path into this. Much like the other commenter stumbled into it via music production, I stumbled into it via composing.
Personally, I've mostly dicked around with SurgeXT and MilkyTracker.
SurgeXT is a so-called VST plugin for use in digital audio workstations (DAWs), which is what the big boys & gals use to make electronic music. But it can also be started standalone, as just a digital instrument. And then you can type on your computer keyboard to play your sound like on a piano. SurgeXT is powerful, it will overwhelm you. Still does for me.
MilkyTracker presents an old-school way of making complete songs, generally 8- or 16-bit songs.
It's quite reduced in its features, which makes it a lot less daunting, and does allow playing around with waveforms for instruments rather directly.
Honestly, I don't think, you can really make a wrong start into this field. Lots of modulation methods have been around since the 70s and 80s, which you'll find in basically any music software.
Try to find something that's fun to you, to do with those sounds, so you keep coming back to try out new things.
For example, I'm a musician, so somedays I do just jam out to myself.
But working towards a little 8-bit song and just trying to create pseudo-instruments is also cool.
If you do have fun with it, you can splurge on hardware, like good headphones and a MIDI keyboard, but you don't need those to get into it.
Thank you!