In this article I am going to explain what you need to start making music from your own home.

What you will need:

Computer:
To start making music of any kind in your home you are going to need a decent computer. It doesn’t have to be anything special; it just needs to have enough memory and processing power to handle a good music production program and a few plug-in’s.

Digital Audio Workstation:
All this is is a piece of software that allows you to produce and sample sounds and then sequence them. This is extremely easy to do so there is no need to be intimidated. A good buy for newbie’s is FL Studio; if you are a little more advanced then I would recommend Reason. You can get a trail version of FL Studio from their website.

There is also another option to buying these two things. This is to buy a synthesiser that does everything. This will cost you around $3000 however. Let’s have a look at what you will need from a synthesiser:

Sounds:
In order to do anything at all with your synthesiser you will need a huge library of sounds to work with. You can also get some VST’s (Virtual Instruments), these are like real instruments only they run on your computer. This will enable you to get almost any sound you want to achieve. These can be expensive however but you can find some available for free for Google.

External Hard Drive:
As you create music more and more you will need somewhere to store it all. An external hard drive is the perfect place to do this.

MIDI Controller:
This is a must. A MIDI controller is basically a special keyboard which will allow you to control the information going into your DAW.

Audio Interface:
This is basically where you will plug any instruments or microphones you have and it acts as a bridge between you and your computer. There are many audio interfaces available on the market. One of the leading ones is an MBox. These can be picked up on eBay relatively cheap.

Microphone:
A microphone is not necessary but if you want to record vocals then it will be a big help. It is important to have a decent microphone for vocals and one can be picked up relatively cheap.

Headphones:
Headphones are a very important aspect of the kit as you will use them to listen to your mixes; if your headphones are low quality then you will not hear your mix properly and get bad results.