In order to make music, you are best off having some musical training. You could hire a musician to dictate and record your inner thoughts, but this is pricey and leaves you extremely dependent on the musician that you hire.

There are also some very interesting inexpensive sequencer programs available online. One of these is called Sonic Producer and can do a good job. If you want to take that next step, then you will need some more stuff.

Assuming that you have some musical training, the next step in composing and recording is buying some good hardware and software. Make sure to trust the store that you are buying from. The merchant should specialize in music and have a friendly and knowledgeable staff that can answer technical questions.
Try to get the store to install all of your software, sound samples and your sound card. The less you have to do, the better. Make sure that the store is providing you with a fast processor and a lot of memory, as sound samples are rather large. You’ll also need a mixer and patch chords.

If you plan on using live audio to record directly into your computer, then a microphone is also necessary. As for the hardware, if you plan on recording live in the same room that your computer is in (perhaps you have a small area for your home studio), you’ll need an extremely quiet hard drive.

Midi sound samples are the most economical way of recording, as you have a one time fee of sound sample purchases. Hiring live musicians is expensive, although the sound quality is usually quite gratifying. Many composers use a combination of live and midi sounds to create their sound tracks.

Occasionally, companies manufacture both hardware and software. An example of this is Steinberg, who produces both extremely powerful and quiet hard drives, and amazing recording software like Cubase.

There are many companies that are in the business of supplying great recording equipment. The bottom line here is to really trust both a recommended dealer for your supplies, and a recommended music teacher (if needed) for some reliable theory and keyboard training. Remember that a keyboard or controller is commonly used to play midi sounds.

Mixing it Up

Congratulations. You have made it and you want information on how to make your own beats and how to make rap beats in general. This is the place to not only find the tools and software you will need, but all sorts of information on recording files, working with midi, wav and mp3, plus the music biz in general. 

So we can get started now, but first, go on over and sign up for our free 5 day make your own beats e-course and newsletter. Definately worth doing. 

So Let’s talk… 

Have you ever dreamed of making your own music but thought it might be a little bit too difficult?  Well, it is not as difficult as you might think.  In fact, these days it is totally easy to make your own beats.  Maybe you’re an accomplished rapper and you want to put something together but don’t have the right music or the money to hire someone else to do it. 

Only a couple years back, making your own hip-hop beats usually meant taking several days of recording and professional studio using drum kits and hiring other musicians.  Those days are gone and with some of the very reasonably priced beat making software available today, you can accomplish the same thing in only a few hours.

In fact, you don’t even need a complicated mixers or dance recording devices.  If you have a PC in your house, then you can make your beats online.  Most of the newer programs out there run on the Internet so you don’t even have to download anything to your computer.  Most of these programs have a very large library of instrumental sounds of decent to high-quality. 

Well, you can make your own beats. They also come with a very decent video tutorials and the best part is their price.  You can pick up a membership to one of these programs for as little as $35.  All of them pretty much do the same thing, the difference being in the amount of instrument sounds that they provide.

One of the newer products out on the market is something called DubTurbo and looks pretty complete. You get a very large library of sounds as well as a pretty complete drum machine, sequencer as well as a nice little library of pre-made tracks, pretty good for such a low price, which is about 30 bucks as of this writing. One used to have to spend a lot more money to get something even close to this.

So get out there, pick up a program, and start to make your own beats either for your own enjoyment, or for sale.  You can do it in a ton of fun.