Last time I recorded anything was back in the early 80’s, with a Revox 4 track recorder and a handful of condensor mics. Recorded instruments: a few basses, a guitar, makeshift percussion and a harmonium.
I’ve now got my feet wet a bit with Audacity, but I now have a 49-key MIDI keyboard incoming, so I need to get into MIDI.
Daaaang.
Expect many questions in the near future… 
Cool. What keyboard did you go for. Most of them come with some sort of DAW.
I bought a Novation Launchkey 49 that came bundled with Ableton live lite
Very powerful but I haven’t really had a chance to fully understand it yet
It is on my very long list of things to learn
I got a secondhand, very basic M-Audio Keyrig 49. Comes with Ableton Live Lite and some proprietary software.
I paid… sit down… 10 euros for it. Just what’s needed for someone who is am absolute beginner!
Here is a free course on Ableton Live 10 lite
And here is a list of paid for courses. There is a sale on at the moment so most courses are £11,99
Ah, is Udemy having their biweekly sale again? 
Did any of you guys get Udemy’s bass course “The Professional Bass Masterclass”?
Is that the 2018’s?
No, it’s a typo. This was meant to read “the early 80’s” (as in, the previous millennium).
Thanks for spotting this; I’ll fix it.
SIX DAYS LATER
So, today, the thing finally arrived – our local mail delivery service appears to have Corona too.
The Keyrig 49 is a basic legacy device, for which drivers and software are no longer developed and supported. This probably explains why it was sold at such a ridiculously low price. But I decided that it was worth a try (and being a software engineer myself, I know a hack or two about getting legacy stuff to work, haha).
To get it to work under Windows 10, I had to jump through a flaming hoop, backwards, blindfolded, hands tied behind my back, three times. But I did it.
It came with Ableton Live Lite 6, which installed successfully, and looks like Windows XP. But it works.
I also installed Ableton Live Lite 10, which works also. I requested a new Live Lite serial number (I suppose the previous owner had used the old one), and it came in literally seconds before I started to type this sentence! 
So, I opened Ableton Live Lite 10, allowed it to authorise, and lo and behold:
Next, I’m going to run through the course provided to me by @studio, and I might also take a look at Cakewalk before I take a decision, but Ableton Live Lite should have me covered for the time being.
ps: I have also just played Aunt Billie J on this. 
Nice! If you are in to synthesizers, the next thing you will want to do is look at software synth VSTi’s. I recommend starting with Synth1:
It may look cheezy but it’s a much loved software emulator of the Nord Lead. There are literally tens of thousands of patches for it, too.
These should work in Ableton:
not sure about Lite though. If not, I would find a different DAW - the ability to load and use software instruments is a basic requirement IMO 
There is a really excellent VSTi for my old synth I used to own, I am pretty tempted. Not free though.
I miss that thing.
Oh WOW, that will be helpful! 
If it would help me to make noises I like, I’d be into it – and I think I am.
In the early eighties, I was heavily influenced by ambient stuff like Ryuichi Sakamoto. Alchemy (from Sylvian & Sakamoto) is still one of my really-loved albums. In these days, I had a Revox A77 4-track recorder with 4 Philips condensor mikes. I also had a harmonium, a Telecaster with .10 strings, and two bass guitars, and for percussion, I used everything I could find in the kitchen and the shed that would make noise if you’d bang it.
I think I would’ve paid whatever I had in those days to get 10% of what modern technology has to offer…
My primary goal of getting something that has a piano keyboard is to brush up on my music theory, but I may end up recording again, just for my own pleasure – I have no ambition to release any material, or play for an audience other than my cats.
Being able to do that on a shoestring budget is huge fun.
The only thing I still have from that era is the Telecaster. The harmonium died unceremoniously, but has now been superceded by a 10 euro keyboard and Ableton Live Lite. The basses have been sold and only recently been replaced. If I quickly tally what I paid for what I have now, it would be around 500 euros, including strings and leads. That’s insane…
But I digress (I’m good at that). Yes, I’d be into anything that will help me create those backdrops. I actually did google for virtual instruments a bit, but haven’t been experimenting with that yet, so that may actually happen today.
Thank you for those links, @howard!
My pleasure! There’s a ton of '80s synth VSTi’s out there, including spot on Yamaha DX7 and Roland D-20/50/etc models.
Sakamoto is great, all the YMO stuff is at minimum interesting, and his soundtracks are awesome. If you haven’t heard this one you might like it:
I didn’t actually know he had teamed up with David Sylvian until you posted it.
Ryuichi was involved with some of Sylvian’s best work in that era! Wait, let me throw something in that container where it’s always Friday…
Did he help with Brilliant Trees? I could actually picture that easily.
edit: why yes he did
I had never known that, for like decades, lol.
It just occurred to me that you literally mean your cats 
I have seen you use this term before, and I thought you were using the jazz slang for your buddy musicians… 
Worked just fine in Ableton Live Lite.
There is one caveat: Ableton Live 10 is only available in a 64-bit version, and you won’t get 32 bit DLLs to work in a native 64 bit application domain, or in plain Dutch: 32-bits VSTi’s won’t work in Ableton Live 10.
