Equipment
We have a studio on site - it's not perfect, but it's many times better than what we had on our old site, which was just a corner of a workshop with no separation and awful acoustics. Now we have a purpose-built space with sound absorbing panels and heavy doors. Oh and a carpet! It's not totally soundproof but it's so much better than it used to be. We use FL Studio as our DAW of choice and have a huge library of plug-ins and samples by Native Instruments. It's the same setup that I personally use at home, which is basically a PC, Yamaha monitors, an audio interface, Rode M3 microphone, stand, a pop filter, headphones and a chair! That's the maximum equipment I've used to record 6 albums, as well as my guitar and a MIDI keyboard. We have been able to kick start a few of our members by providing basic equipment on which to learn from home. I myself was one of these people a few years ago. I had a 10 year old, ex-school computer with some extra RAM in it, a copy of FL Studio was installed on it (an older version) and I bought some headphones and an interface. Using that setup, I got to grips with FL Studio and fell back in love with writing and recording music, and all from my hostel bedroom! I have since passed the computer on to another one of our members so that it can be of use to them. It's absolutely possible to create professional sounding music on a budget and at home, and we want to help and enable people to do that. It is well worth a mention that you can download a trial version of FL Studio from Image Line's website.