My tip is, make sure the snares snaps hard, the bass thumps hard, the instruments aren't thin, and pick up a book on mixing and get yourself friends with the parametric equalizer, compressor and don't goto heavy on the reverbs. Goto Guitar center and familiarize yourself with the keyboards, the 3 main ones are the Korg Triton, Roland Fantom and Yamaha Motif. Akai MPCs are for samplers, I don't know if you're into that, but give it a try to find out. To start off try to get just a low budget mixer with a xlr mic input, atleast a $100 24bit soundcard like the emu 0404 or m-audio ones, don't skimp on the mics, thats probably the most important thing, try to atleast get a $200 condenser mic like the Rode Nt1, if not, shure dynamics go around $99, $60 if at a pawn shop. Also the pros use Protools, but cakewalk or something similar like Adobe Audition should be good to load up your newly created beats and records your vocals. If you don't got the budget just fool around with a trial version of Fruityloops, but don't use the presets, download some soundfonts off the internet and load them into it. Hope this helps you out. MERRY CHRISTMAS NW!!!