Lesson 1 - The Equipment

First of all we're going to need a computer. As you're probably reading this on a computer, it's safe to assume you already have one, or at least access to one. Almost any modern computer can handle music production, albeit with varying levels of success. A minimum spec requirement would be a processor of 1.5 ghz, at least 1 GB of RAM and a 50 GB hard drive. The higher your specs, the more virtual tracks, FX and software synthesisers you will be able to run at once. For this reason, PC's and laptops aimed at the gaming market are ideal, as they tend to be fairly 'pimped out' on the CPU and RAM side of things. One thing you wont need however is a fancy video card, pretty much anything goes here as this kind of software is fairly basic with its' visual needs.

The second thing we need is a soundcard. Pretty much every computer these days has one, but sadly they're not all created equal. You can make music with just about any sound card, but with the cheap ones installed as standard you'll soon run into problems. Firstly, they will only be able to handle playing a limited number of tracks at once, and secondly they will have very poor latency. Latency as it refers to computer music is basically the amount of time between say, pressing a key on a keyboard, or turning a virtual knob, and the note or effect being audible. For example, lets say we've plugged a USB keyboard into our computer and loaded up a software synthesiser. With good (low) latency the sound will ring out at almost the instant the key is pressed, so soon in fact that you'll hear it simultaneously. With bad (high) latency, the key is depressed and the sound may take a second or more to play. This makes playing an instrument virtually impossible. The latency will also affect the time it takes for a movement made with the mouse on say an effect knob or volume slider to register audibly. This can be frustrating at the writing stage, and completely unuseable at the performance stage.
To counter these problems were going to need a soundcard that supports the ASIO driver. This is a specially designed driver that runs with very little latency and supports high numbers of virtual tracks. These start at as little s £50, and run into the thousands depending on quality. For begginners, I would reccomend something cheap and cheerful, as long as it has ASIO you should be onto a winner. If you're using a laptop, you will probably need an external card that plugs in via USB or Firewire. These start at around £100. If you're planning on playing real intruments through the soundcard, you will also want one that has audio inputs. Pretty much any ASIO soundcard will have these, but again the quality varies with price. For guitars and mic's the best option is to go for something with a built in preamp. If you're just planning on using a keyboard, USB options are available that require no audio input, at a very reasonable price. For the purposes of these lessons however, I will show you that no external instruments are required at all, as everything can be 'programmed' in with the mouse. It is also worth noting that modern Macs use the ASIO driver as standard, so if you're a Mac user, you're alredy winning!

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly is the actual software were going to use. This is SO important I'm going to devote an entire post to it, coming up.