Building a Beat Making Studio with $350

One of the top questions that I get from subscribers whether it’s through email, comments or DM is what do I need to buy if I'm just starting to make beats.

Now I've been thinking about different ways that I could create content on this that can help but avoid being just another post listing gear so what I've decided is to take a more practical approach and make this into a series of posts that go over what I would personally buy myself if I was starting over from scratch and under different price points. Those price points will be $350, $500, and $1000 so that way we can cover most people in the spectrum.

In the next coming week’s we’ll be covering the $500 and $1000 price points but today we will be focusing on the people who only have $350 to jumpstart their studio.

Real quick before we begin, I just want to point out that this entire series will be created with the beat maker in mind. Additionally, the prices for the items shown today will be in American Dollars and will not include taxes because those vary by state and finally, any prices shown today are during the time of posting and can change at any time. Because of that I highly encourage you to check the links in this post for all of the items we go over today for the most up to date pricing but without further ado, lets dive right in.

DAW

Ok so the first item in our shopping list is going to be a Digital Audio Work Station or a DAW and this is the software that we will use for to make beats. Now under this price point, there are two programs that I really like and they are Studio One Artist and FL Studio. FL Studio is one of the most popular DAWs on the market and for good reason.

Some of the things that I really like about it include the fact that its geared towards beatmakers, it's really easy to learn and that once you buy it you get free updates for life. On the other hand Studio One is a complete powerhouse when it comes to audio. It has some extremely powerful features not only for beat making but also for recording and post-production and personally, I just think Studio One is a fantastic program for someone who is looking to not only create beats but also expand to something like engineering down the road.

Nonetheless, both programs will come packed with great native VSTs, sounds, and loops to get you started making beats. Because of the flexibility, however, I will be going with Studio One Artist but just know that both of these two programs are fantastic and both are gonna be great for beat making.

Now the only thing to consider with Studio One Artist is that although it's very similar to the professional version that has everything, the one thing it doesn't have is 3rd party VST support. I know this initially sounds like a deal breaker but there is actually an add on for it that gives us this functionality back.

Studio One Artist alone is $99 and the 3rd party VST Support Add-on is $79 so once we add those two together we get a total of $179.94 which all things considered is just a little under the $200 retail price of FL Studio.

Ok so with a $350 budget minus the cost of our DAW we are left with $170.06.

Studio Headphones

Now I've made an entire video on my channel on why you don't need an audio interface for beat making and I still find that to be very true, especially if you're only working with $350. I personally think starting out there are better ways to spend your money so we're going to skip that today. The other thing we'll be skipping at this price point is studio monitors. Eventually, you will want to get a pair but again, if you're only working with $350 my recommendation is instead to get a good pair of headphones.

Ideally, the perfect pair of headphones will need to be comfortable, sturdy, produce a flat frequency response, which is ideal for mixing, and be aesthetically appealing.

With only $170 left my head immediately goes towards two options, the KRK KNS 8400's and the Audio Technica ATH-M50x. I actually own both of them and I can speak highly of either.

I first bought the KRKs way back when I was first starting out and I used them as my main pair of cans for a long time. Nowadays I use them primarily as my tracking headphones and I myself use the Audio Technica ATH-M50x but regardless of whichever you pick you will not go wrong. Aside from being comfortable, sturdy and reliable, they both also offer a detachable cable for easy storing and swapping, great frequency response and they both look and sound amazing.

In any case, the KRKs are $134 and the Audio Technicas are $129 but I personally will be choosing the Audio Technicas

So to recap we got Studio One Artist for $99.95, the 3rd Party VST Support Add-on for $79.99 and a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50x for $129. Our grand total, in the end, comes out 308.94, which is right under our $350 budget.

Read the next installment by clicking HERE