Do you have a song in your head that the world should hear? Have you been strumming away and written a masterpiece? Are you dancing to a beat nobody else can feel and you think it's about time they did? You're in luck! If you're reading this the chances are that you've got a computer, in which case you've got a recording studio just waiting for you to shut the door and turn the red light on.

Would you care to elaborate?

Oh, alright then. If this was any time before 1990 you would need enough money to hire some studio time or buy an analogue multi-track recorder, pre-amps, compressors, effects units, tape, a splicing block, a mixing desk, microphones, cables, drum machines¹, synthesizers, samplers, sequencers...²

Fortunately we're in the 21st century and most of this stuff can run on your PC.

Be warned: your computer will not write the music for you and will not mix the music for you: this is stuff you'll either need to know already or pick up as you go along. Neither will it tell you 'Oh, that sounds a little bit too much like...' or join you in the pub after you've finally nailed the rhythm part. There is software that can create music from scratch, but it won't be your music. We'll have a look at some of the usual music software in a minute. First, we'll look at the hardware.

Hardware

The most important bit of kit you'll need (after your brain) is the computer. Music, like most artistic uses for a computer, takes up a lot of resources. Your computer will need to play multiple sound files, run several different programs, display fairly complex graphics and access the hard disk like it's never been accessed before. So you need a pretty powerful PC. As PC technology moves so quickly there's not much point specifying what you should look for in the processor and memory: any information would be out of date by this time next week. Suffice to say you should aim a little higher than the latest high street special.

While it is possible to make music with a PC without needing any additional internal or external hardware (standard sound-cards are getting better all the time, sequencing software will allow you to input notes with the mouse or keyboard and there are millions of pre-recorded samples on the internet and CDs), for halfway decent results you will need:

• A soundcard or audio interface. The most important thing to
  get right is the quality of the sound getting into the PC and that takes a decent soundcard or audio interface. They do the same job but a soundcard is internal while an audio interface is external, usually hooked up by USB. There are also soundcards available with a 'break-out box': these take the inputs and outputs from an internal soundcard and send them down a cable to an external lump covered in sockets. They avoid the PC's internal gubbins interfering with the signal, which can be a problem when you're plugging directly into the back of the PC. Soundcards and external interfaces often have MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) sockets as well.
• A controller. The keyboard on your computer is a controller: basically a bunch of 'on/off' switches to tell the computer what to do. While you can use your computer's keyboard to control music software you'll probably find it a lot easier to use something built for the job. The most obvious example is a piano-style keyboard. Why a keyboard? Electronic musicians were among the first to use the potential of computers for making music and they were accustomed to using keyboards to control synthesizers. Imagine a caped Rick Wakeman trying to get all widdly with a few stands full of wired up ocarinas. Just wouldn't be the same.
  
  For reasons which will be become clear later it's helpful to have more controls available than just keys. It's also good to have plenty of knobs. Knobs and sliders. There are seperate controllers which specialise in knobs and sliders but that would mean having another box lying around, so you can get keyboards with a plethora of knobs and sliders built in, all just waiting to be twiddled and slid.
  
  There are a lot of other controllers which aim to do different things (such as drum pads, guitar controllers etc) but the keyboard is the most useful and versatile for a beginner, and it's what your software will be expecting. Can't play a keyboard? Fear not: while it may appear daunting just remember that it's only a bunch of switches.
  
• A microphone. Unless you're making purely electronic music you will need a microphone. Whether you're an acoustic guitarist that needs to record your latest strummy masterpiece or a dance producer that feels the need to insert that perfect belch ³ you'll find a microphone essential. There are far too many different types of microphone to go in to here (and if you know the difference between a cardioid and hypercardioid microphone this entry probably isn't for you) but if you want to find a good all-purpose microphone you'd be best off visiting your local musical instrument emporium and asking for advice. Don't go to a high street shop - if you mention Shure, Behringer, Rhode or AKG⁴ there you're likely to be met with blank looks.
  
• Cables. One of the surprising things about having your studio in your PC is the amount of cables that you'll still have tangled around each other waiting to trip you up in a careless moment. Exactly which cables you'll need will depend on the set up you're using. You might need MIDI cables, jack-jack audio cables, jack-phono audio cables, USB cables, microphone cables...
  
  When buying cables you should make sure that they are as short as practically possible. This isn't just to reduce the tripping hazard but also to reduce signal degredation: the longer the cable the weaker the signal gets. You should also make sure that the cables are screened: this cuts down on interference with the signal and is especially important in a room full of electronic equipment which will be doing its upmost to whack a mains hum on everything you record.
  
  

The arrival of the USB (Universal Serial Bus) has changed the way that all these bits of hardware interact. Where you used to need to connect your audio via audio cables and MIDI via MIDI cables there are now controllers available that have integrated audio interfaces and connect to the PC via a USB cable. This means that you can plug your microphone or guitar into your keyboard and all the information will be passed down one lead. If space and money are limited these provide a useful all-in-one solution.

Anyway, that's the stuff you'll need to get your ideas into the computer. Now you need something to make sense of it all when it gets there.

Software

There are many, many different types of music software available for computers. Some specialise in one thing, most do a bit of lots of things. Some are free, some cost phenomenal amounts of money. As this is a basic guide we'll focus on the software that is most likely to be useful and affordable. There's also a brief smattering of music technology history as the software you'll probably be using is a mish-mash of independant, revolutionary ideas that have swallowed each other up and become the software studio.

• Sequencers. Remember what we said about controller keyboards? That they're just a bunch of switches? Well, if you keep that in mind you'll be able to understand sequencers. A keyboard just sends out a signal that tells a sound generator⁵ which note to play and how to play it. A sequencer does the same thing but, rather than doing it in real time from a keyboard, it does it from a pre-recorded bunch of instructions. For example: if you plugged your keyboard into a sequencer you could record your playing into it and then the sequencer would remember the instructions and, when you asked it to, send them on to the sound module. Originally an analogue hardware unit, sequencers went digital with the arrival of MIDI in the 1980s and then became the first practical musical application for computers. As sequencers don't generate any sound themselves (they just tell another piece of equipment what to play and how to play it) they need relatively little power from the computer.
  
• Audio and Multitrack Recorders. Once upon a time there was an instrument called the Fairlight. It wasn't the first of its type but it was probably the closest to a household name that professional digital music equipment gets. It was famous because it cost £28,000.00. At the time that was enough to buy a house. It's relevant because it was a sampler.
  
  Samplers have been through a serious bit of growing up and in order to explain it, and the relevance, we need to look at a fork in the road.

  Sampling involves taking a sound and chopping it up into little chunks so that a computer can understand it; once it's chopped up the computer can theoretically do what you like with it. Initially the processing power of computers meant that the sound couldn't be chopped up too small because they could deal with a few big chunks easier than a lot of little chunks. Unfortunately, the bigger the chunks the less accurate the sound the computer dealt with. However, sampling software was written for both seriously meaty computers and less well-endowed computers in dedicated sampling boxes (known as Samplers, oddly enough!) The well endowed computers were able to record large amounts of little chunks; the samplers recorded small lumps of large chunks. The technology continued to split. The high end stuff started being used in studios to record mixes while the low end stuff turned up in consumer keyboards (such as the Casio SK1, the first mass-market sampling keyboard) and increasingly well specified professional samplers.

  As processing power and memory storage increased, the line between computer based digital audio recorders and dedicated samplers became blurred, as the price of a PC able to record large quantites of high quality audio came down. Dedicated samplers tried to keep up but, despite an increase in power and features, couldn't compete with the flexibility of the PC, which could record multiple, long tracks of high quality audio and manipulate them in an easy to understand graphic environment.

• Software Studios. In time sequencers, digital audio/multi-track recorders, effects and processors got bundled up into one piece of software: the software studio. Having everything in one place means that it's easier to keep track of what you're doing and that, theoretically, everything should work together. Most of the big name recording software programmes (Cubase, Cakewalk, Logic) are software studios.

VST and Audio Units

Recording Audio

Recording MIDI

Mixing and Mastering

Exporting

Once your mix is sounding as good as it's going to get (it will rarely sound as good as you want it to: that's what highly trained, experienced and expensive engineers are for) you need to convert it from a bunch of assorted audio tracks, sequenced bits, effects and processors into a file that people can listen to.