in this video i'm going to look at a budget laptop home studio setup for
beginners specifically a windows based laptop now if you're
looking at getting into music production and you have a laptop or are thinking of
getting a laptop then this video should help you to set
up a bit of a home studio so you can start making music i'm zane
welcome to simple green tech where i do weekly audio tech tips tutorials and
reviews to help you conquer the tech and unleash your creativity now i've
linked to all of the products mentioned in this
video down in the description so you can easily head down there and check out any
of this stuff for yourself so first up let's talk about the laptop
itself now you don't need a powerful gaming
laptop to make music my laptop over here is a 6th gen
intel i5 laptop and it's really not that powerful but
i can make music on that thing no problem now one thing that
might come into play is the amount of ram that's on your laptop
now i recommend getting at least a minimum of 8 gigabytes of ram
more is better of course but you can get away with having
less ram if you absolutely have to about four years ago i was making music
on a laptop that had three gigabytes of ram on it
and you know it worked for some smaller projects
i know things have gotten bigger programs have gotten bigger and the
needs have gotten greater so you may not be able to get away with
three gigabytes anymore but there's still 32-bit daws out there
which we're going to talk about in a little bit and once you have your
laptop you can actually start making music right away
if you plan on making music inside the box meaning you're using
virtual instruments and maybe some loops and samples things like that to make
your music you're not recording real world instruments or your voice
into your computer so if you have your laptop and maybe a
set of earbuds you can start making music right away i
do recommend maybe investing in a bit better pair of headphones but you
can use earbuds if you have to now the one thing that you're going to
need on your laptop is a daw or digital audio workstation
and this is the software that's used to make
music and like i said i'm going to get into that a little
later in the video so stick around now if you plan on
recording audio at all like a guitar or your voice or something like that
then you should invest in an audio interface and you can
get one like this this is the behringer um2
it's very budget friendly so it has a mic input and it also has a line input
in there and you get an instrument input for
recording your guitars or bass guitar whatever
and this works for a singer songwriter type of setup or
a solo musician that's just creating music on his own something like this
will give you cd quality audio but of course if you
need more inputs and outputs there are other
audio interfaces something like my audient
id44 back there or focusrite or behringer make some audio interfaces
with a lot more inputs and outputs plus there are many
other brands out there if you're a drummer you're going to want
at least four inputs on your audio interface
eight is recommended so invest in what you need and what you can
afford i'll be sure to link to a few options
down in the description so you can check those out
and once you have your audio interface and say you want to record some audio
into your computer like your voice you're going to want to
look at some microphone options and there are two main types of
microphones there's dynamic and condenser
microphones dynamic mics are really good at
rejecting background sound and they don't require
phantom power but most audio interfaces nowadays have phantom
power so that shouldn't be a consideration for you
now a condenser mic will require phantom power
and it's a lot more sensitive so if you're trying to pick up really
good detail in your voice or in your guitar
then you might want to get a condenser microphone but keep in mind
it does pick up some of the surrounding sounds that are around you whereas a
dynamic mic might reject some of those sounds now a
couple of budget condenser microphones that you might want to consider
are the mxl 990 which i have right back here
and also there's the audio technica at2020 which is another great budget
condenser microphone now for dynamic mics
i highly recommend getting the shure sm57 as this mic will grow with you
you can continue using this mic later on in your music career
now it's not the most budget friendly but it's not super expensive either
i think it's usually around ninety nine dollars and maybe sometimes
under ninety nine dollars it's a great value
the mic sounds great you can use it on your voice and you can use it for miking
up guitar cabinets or whatever it's an
extremely versatile microphone now on the budget side of things
the behringer xm8500 dynamic microphone is a decent budget price microphone you
can use this on your voice you can use it on
guitar cabinets or whatever it's extremely versatile just like the sm57
it just might not have the same sort of tone that the sm57 has
which is fine for starting out with this can be a great microphone for you and i
think it goes for around 20 or 30 dollars
and i'll be sure to link to it down in the descriptions so you can check out
what the current pricing is on this now a couple of optional items that you
don't absolutely need but you might want to
invest in are first a midi keyboard something like this
m-audio keystation 32 this is a very budget priced midi keyboard it gets the
job done it doesn't have any fancy features really to it but for
playing the piano or other instruments with it it works great
and i think this goes for around sixty dollars i can't remember i bought it
quite a while ago but check the link in the description for
the latest pricing on this now another optional item is studio
monitors so i have these budget priced mackie
cr3s i think you can see them here and those are very budget-friendly and
they are a great step up from either using your laptop's built-in speakers or
using some of those cheesy desktop speakers that are made
out of plastic so all of this stuff connects together
very easily you have your audio interface that
connects by usb and it's powered by usb well most of them are there's some
bigger ones like the audient id44 you have to plug into the wall but a lot of
these smaller ones you just plug into your laptop and they'll be powered by
the laptop and same with the midi keyboard that's
powered by the laptop so you just plug in your usb
the speakers connect to the back of the audio interface they require
power so those aren't the most portable thing and your microphones will be
powered by the audio interface if they require phantom power if they
don't require phantom power you don't need to worry about power just plug it
in and turn it up now one of the things
that are really overlooked in a home studio are cables so you're
going to want to get some xlr cables and quarter inch cables if
you plan on recording some instruments you'll need those
quarter inch cables and if you're recording microphones you'll want the
xlr cables now i know there are those xlr to quarter inch cables
for microphones stick with the xlr to xlr cables
that will give you the best results for audio quality
as it's going to go through your mic preamp in your audio interface
sometimes those quarter inch cables they bypass the mic preamp so you're not
getting the full sound that you should be out
of your microphone and condenser microphones absolutely need the xlr
cable so you can pass the phantom power through to the microphone
okay so you have all of this stuff it's all connected and
you're ready to start making music now you just need the software on your
computer and there are a lot of great free
options out there cakewalk by bandlab is an incredible
free daw or digital audio workstation and it's unlimited so you're not limited
in any way with cakewalk by bandlab you can have
unlimited tracks you can add your own vst plugins which are
instruments or effects that you can add in there's a lot out there that can grab
for free subscribe to my channel for a lot of
videos on those and another digital audio workstation
that's absolutely free and unlimited and i highly recommend is
traction waveform this is a program that i use
every day i find it incredibly intuitive the layout of the user interface is
really well done it allows me to just focus on
making music which is what i want to do and the third option
is soundbridge again it's another unlimited free digital audio workstation
now for some paid options a lot of people like
fl studio for starting out with it's one that i started out with
and the great thing about it is you purchase it once
and you get lifetime updates for free so i bought it
many many years ago and i'm still getting the current
fl studio for free and it's one of the first programs that i install whenever i
get a new computer fl studio can be great for beat makers
but if you create rock styles of music it can be great for
that too now another really popular program is
ableton live again it's great for beat makers or
rock people or whatever type of music you want it just has a bit of a
different workflow so what i recommend is trying out a few
of these daws or digital audio workstations and seeing which one works
best for your style and your workflow now i'll link to one of my videos that
has a bunch of the best digital audio workstations for beginners you can check
out that video and maybe decide on a few that you can
try out or try the ones that i mentioned in this video and see if any of those
work for you you don't have to listen to all of the
people that say well this program's better than that program or that program
is better than this program it's whatever program works best for you
because whatever you're comfortable with and
you're good at using you're going to create the best music
with that program regardless of if it's the best program according to
some guy on a forum somewhere and the same goes
for your audio interface and any of the other equipment
if you're good at using that audio interface or whatever other equipment
you have you're going to create great music with
that audio interface or with that midi controller
regardless of what somebody else says now i hope this video has put you on the
right path for setting up your laptop home studio
and if you want to check out some of the best free digital audio workstations
click up here or click down here to see what youtube recommends
if you like this video can you please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to
the channel if you want to see more videos from me
thank you so much for watching for simple green tech
i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk soon