Hi!
There are two ways to make beats: one is where you do samples of your own and compose the beats from those samples on your sampler and the other is where you rely on the samples of digital audio workstations. The second one is easier for beginners because it doesn’t take so long to get results.
For this, you only need a computer, a digital audio workstation and a headset which is good enough, meaning over-ear-headsets.
If you already have a computer, fine, so you only need the headset and the right digital audio workstation. There are lots of different audio workstations, for example Fruity Loops Studio or Ableton Live.
If you choose Ableton Live, there is the advantage that you can use it together with a music controller, which lets you submit your own musical ideas to the program in the intuitive, felt way like you would for example drum it with your fingers.
For example, if you choose to use a drum pad, you can easily put in the sounds when you connect the drum pad (music controller) to your computer and thus to the DAW. When you buy an Akai MPD 218, the music software Ableton Live Light is contained in the product, and you can install it on your computer and also register yourself. This also gives you the opportunity to watch the Tutorials that Akai gives out.
If you do this, you can start out making beats very fast and see your first results! It is also relatively cheap, and the fact that you got your own headphones lets you save a lot of money for the studio surrounding that you would have to establish when not having headphones, meaning for example monitor speakers on both sides of your workstation / your computer.
Two different approaches in beat-production again lead together
The other approach where you do your own samples takes longer at the beginning, because you first build up your own sound library, then you load the sounds into your DAW or simply let them stay in your sampler. From there on, you compose your beats on the sampler and also save them on the sampler. The best brand and sampler for this is the Akai MPC.
You can also combine this approach with the other method, meaning that you compose little blocks of music on your sampler (using your own little samples) and then load those into the DAW of your choice to use the advantages of this and this style of working (workflow). This gives you the opportunity to gain very high quality sound that you created yourself, and the opportunity to process and create it on your computer. You then have the advantage of a big screen and can combine tools and effects of the digital audio workstation together with your own high quality samples on top.
If you liked this article and/or got questions, please leave a comment below!