Knew a bit of guitar but that wasn’t all that useful when it came to production. I would just sit there and listen to the target track over and over again so I knew it bar for bar. Jumped into a DAW and started to copy it. Would listen to the target track and my version for differences and try to get as close as possible to the target. During this whole process is where I’d learnt. Literally by trial and error. YouTube wasn’t around back then so there’s no tutorials or guides. I just learn by listening and tweaking. If you follow a guide or tutorial, your final product is going to be more or less exact as the tutorial because you’ve followed it step by step.