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.

One of the things is underrated in popular music is using reverb on drum samples. Although at the same times there a lot of people who, whilst trying to make use of this effect for their drum tracks, manage to degrade the sound of their drum tracks and make them sound annoying.

If you are planning to use this effect on one of your drum samples, think about the type of sound and effect you want to achieve. Is it going to drive the listener crazy after a while? Is it going to be constant or just every now and again? When you figure out the exact thing you want to achieve with reverb then you will certainly be one step closer to achieving your goal.

The length of the reverb you put on your samples is one of the main things you need to focus on. A lot of people believe that songs with a much slower tempo warrant a longer release on the reverb sound patch. Other people would tell you to simply experiment with both long and short releases on medium and fast tempo songs and just see what works for you personally. Sometimes a longer amount of reverb will help to fill up the track and will mean that the other instruments will not need to perform as much. Basically it will take the burden of performance off the other samples and give you much more freedom.

Adding certain reverb to your projects can help you to create a certain tone to your song. You can even imply a location for the song such as an opera house or large venue. Although this might sound like a daunting task that would be hard to accomplish, using reverb will make it simple. You can achieve it simply by adding a different reverb setting to the entire selection of drum samples you have loaded and sometimes maybe even a bit of reverb to your instrument tracks. You will need to play around to try and create the most realistic listening experience you can.

Although I have mentioned a lot of ways of doing things so far in this article it is important to remember that as long as you manage to find something that actually works for the song, nobody will know what effect you have placed on it or the amount of reverb you are using. It is important to play around and allow a little improvisation.

If you take into amount what we have covered in this article and also use your natural instinct for applying these effects to your tracks then you will be well on your way to becoming a good music producer and will soon be ready for anything.