Help me set up basic studio!

[tl2pacalyps7196]

Ok me and my friend want to start a small home studio on his comp for making rap beats and maybe recording some of his freestyles.... Where do i get started? We have FL Studio Producer edition, but maybe thats not the best for hip hop beats... What is a good program for hop hop beats? Also he has a keyboard with midi out... That means we can hook it up to his computer correct? and it can control instruments? What will i need other than these two items? He has a soundblaster card, not sure exactly wut one it is, but its 6.1 and its a good card. He has 1 gb ram (not virtual memory), and a 3.4 GHZ processor. So what esle do i need?

[mshilarious]

1) a microphone or two. Do a search on the mic board for rap vocal and you'll get tons of recommendations

2) preamp. Do a search on The Rack for rap vocal preamp.

3) monitors--check the Other Equipment board

plus the associated cables. That should get you started.

[distortedrumble]

fl studio can do rap beats..reason does them also. yeah you can hook up your keyboard to it. i dont think it can control instruments through the keyboard though. soundblaster is good for gaming but not so much for recording although you can still use it for that and if you do a search for soundblaster on this site, i gets bashed like an openly gay student at BYU. look into getting an audiophile 24/96 sound card..it has 2 analog inputs and a better midi than the SB i think. if your trying to run instruments into it also, i would look into getting a small mixer and or preamp like the maudio DMP3. the audiophile2496 card is 99.99 at www.americanmusical.com and so is the DMP3.

[tl2pacalyps7196]

how much would all of this cost?? im trying to not spend alot right now.... because freestyling and beats is just a hobby right now.... FL STUDIO is ok? I just want to know if there is anything better than fl studio.. And what kind of microphone? Because lol.... He's got a pc mic... the white kind u get at radioshack or walmart... what is it the keyboard can do once it is hooked up? it has midi in and midi out on the keyboard

[Hi_D_Ho_Man]

FL is just fine for making beats. You just need to take the time to learn it and then decide if it suits you. There are dozens of programs out there from $0 and up. FL Studio can be used to make your beats and record your freestyles.
Other than that if you're atleast semi-serious about your music you'll need a better audio interface (soundcard) and some sort of monitoring other than pc speakers. whats is your budget?

[protein]

Get hold of Reason. This is the sort of thing you can make with it

http://www.loudmedicine.net/mp3/drdeath.mp3

It's one of my old tunes. It might not be your style of music but's an example of the kind of thing possible. I think it's an absolutely awesome program and I've had some phenomenal recent successes with it.

[mshilarious]

Originally Posted by tl2pacalyps7196

how much would all of this cost?? im trying to not spend alot right now.... because freestyling and beats is just a hobby right now.... FL STUDIO is ok? I just want to know if there is anything better than fl studio.. And what kind of microphone? Because lol.... He's got a pc mic... the white kind u get at radioshack or walmart... what is it the keyboard can do once it is hooked up? it has midi in and midi out on the keyboard

I'm bad at keyboards but basically it will trigger MIDI events, which means that you can record the MIDI performance rather than the audio, and use whatever patches you want via software. There's a lot more to MIDI, but like I said I'm bad at it.

Regarding mic/preamp and monitor costs, you can get started pretty cheaply on the mic/preamp front--say a used Shure SM57 and a M-Audio DMP3, plus cable and stand and pop filter for a little more than $200, and you'll have quality stuff. You can spend less, but at some level the beats will sound much better than the vocal so it will seem like karaoke.

Monitors are tougher, good ones are expensive. However if you start out with the mic & preamp, your tracking will sound good, and you can worry about mixdown later, just do your best with what you've got.