Hi guys,

New to the forum, i've gotta say it looks great and hopefully i can stick around for a while

I have just been given some hardware, and would like to know the best way to set it up:

I have a TASCAM US-122L external soundcard Midi in/out, M-Audio Axiom 25 and a PC setup with Windows Vista Home Premium - C2Duo 2.13GHz 4 GB's RAM, heaps of HDD space.

In the past i have used Cakewalk Pro Audio 8 to record guitars and i used to have wav files of each drum hit, and i would copy and paste to make beats, but now i think with the new equipment i should be using heaps of different software - especially to take advantage of the M-audio Midi controller.

What do you guys recommend? I would like to have realistic sounding drums and dont care to much about having a majorly fancy audio recording program but would love something that is cheap (read:free if possible) and quick to be able to get beats and guitar down with decent quality.

Looking forward to hearing your suggestions,
Stealth

you can continue to use cakewalk to record but in order to take advantage of the midi controller u would need something like Reson or Fruity Loops....you can go to these web sites and get the free demos the will get you started until you get your money right....but you will need to invest a little bit of money to get the quaility you want.....if you ever need help mixing tracks send them to me via email broken down to alan.jordan@comcast.net and i will do one song for free...ttyl