Cool, FruitLoops is popular, never used it but it looks fine to me.
Yep, tons of good interfaces. I use a Zoom U-24, a lot of people have gone with the FocusRite Scarlett series and love them. Presonus makes good ones, and there’s higher end ones as well from Audient, Arturia, and other companies that offer additional features.
There’s also some less expensive ones from Behringer that actually look just fine to me.
So to get started on this there’s a few other topics already. To initially get squared away what you need is:
- A computer. I do not recommend mobile devices for this, though they can be fine for simple recording.
- An audio interface, as mentioned. While you can get away with cheaper things like the iRig, you will want a real audio interface if you get serious.
- Good Digital Audio Workstation software. As mentioned above, audio editors like Audacity are insufficient for real music production. There’s a lot of choices here; I use Reaper, Ableton is also great choice (and would be my second pick), FL Studio, Pro Tools, Cakewalk/Sonar, and others exist.
- If you have a Mac, just start with GarageBand as your DAW and then upgrade to Logic Pro when you really get in to it.
Here’s a thread that covers a lot. This should get you all started:
As you get more in to it, I’ve started another thread about DAW plugins:
We have separate threads for GarageBand, Reaper, and other DAWs as well.