 How to Produce a Christmas Number One Hit
The worst thing about Christmas has to be listening to Top Of The Pops and the Christmas Number 1 – Girls Aloud, Robbie Williams, Westlife and Mr Blobby for goodness sake! Surely anyone can produce a better Christmas Hit than those. After all, a computer does all the work, doesn't it - all you do is press a few buttons and jiggle a few drum and bass lines around.
So what do you need? You need a PC with a reasonable amount of processing power under the hood - a Pentium III at least, preferably a P4 - in order to run the music software.
Audio files are quite large - forget MP3s, we're talking the real thing here - and for each track of audio you record you'll need around 10.6Mb of hard disk space per minute. Every track won't be filled with audio so you won't need quite that much in a multi-track recording but for a four-minute 16-track song it would be wise to allocate around 500Mb of hard disk space.
Playing cards
You need a soundcard. All modern PCs have one of these but if you don't want your song to sound like it was recorded in a back bedroom - even it if was - get a decent card.
At Christmas-stocking prices are a range of SoundBlaster cards such as the Audigy 2 ZS (for under £70/$100) with a good set of built-in sounds. But more than that, they support SoundFonts. These are samples the card uses to produce realistic instrument sounds and better beefy bass lines than yer average sound card.
If you've a rich Mummy and Daddy they’ll be pleased to buy you a more expensive card such as E-Mu’s Emulator X (around £220/$380), a desktop sampling system that also supports SoundFonts. If you own a nightclub you'll be able to afford one of CreamWare's high-end systems with on-board synthesisers that can do everything but sober up the drummer - not that you need a drummer 'cause the cards have all the drum sounds you need.
Key move
You'll also need a MIDI keyboard to record your masterpiece. There’s a vast choice here from E-Mu’s XBoard 25, XBoard 49, and Swissonic’s CK490 (all running around £100/$150 give or take) to the Fatar range running from the TMK61 (£130/$225) up to the VMK 188 Plus (£599/$1000) with several models inbeween.
These keyboards don't have any on-board sounds like synthesisers but they're much cheaper than synths and there are sounds in the soundcard anyway. If you've seen an Elton John concert and can't face the thought of touching a keyboard, don't worry - you can use pre-recorded loops and samples and cleverly arrange them in stunning combinations without a keyboard.
Listen 'ere
A decent pair of speakers is essential. The ten quid jobbies that were bundled with your PC may be fine for playing MP3s but they simply won't do for mixing music.
The Big Boys use dedicated monitor speakers which can cost as much as a holiday in Barbados but if you leave the other half at home you could easily afford Behringer’s MS16s (£46/$79), or Edirol’s MA7A (£80/$135) or MA150 (£120/$200).
If your PC is near your hi fi you can run the audio through that but switch off any bass boost or EQ settings. The idea is to get a flat, uncoloured response so if it sounds good on those speakers it should sounds good on any speakers. So the theory goes.
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