Choose your beat making programs. Free programs such as Rebirth and trial versions of Fruityloops, Ableton Live and AcidXpress can help you get your feet wet in beat making.
If you want to get into the big leages, Reason is a program often used by sound professionals to create beats and arrange them into complete songs. Reason offers an interface that uses several virtual instruments as plugins. Though it is somewhat expensive, if you are looking for sound control, Reason can be much cheaper than setting up an analog cabinet.
Install your hardware and software. If you have not yet installed your audio-MIDI interface, set that up first and make sure the drivers are fully installed. Your audio-MIDI interface should come with a setup disk to give your computer the drivers it needs.
Configure your software. Most beat-making software requires that you set your preferences to detect your audio and MIDI surfaces. This can usually be done using the Preferences option, usually located in the Edit menu on your Windows-based computer.
Set the audio settings to detect your audio-MIDI interface as the microphone input and MIDI device, and choose whether you would like the output to run through your PC's audio card speakers or your audio-MIDI device. Some software offers the option to automatically detect your sound and control surfaces.
Test your sound. In the Preferences menu you just visited, there should be a means of checking your microphone's sound feed to make sure that it is coming in at a good level. A good level of sound will stay mostly in the green of the sound bar and will occasionally go into the yellow part, but it should never enter the red. If the indicator goes into the red, the audio will sound distorted in an occurrence called clipping.
Open a new project in your audio beat-making program and start a new track. Some beat making programs, like Audacity, are capable of multi-track recording, while Acid Xpress is limited to one track, unless you upgrade to the pay software.
Program or record audio into the tracks. When making your first beat, keep in mind that the framework of an electronic beat is based on a drum beat. A basic drum beat is just a snare and bass or kick drum. For a clean beat sound, begin composing your beats from two drum sounds, one high and one low, and build out from there.
Pick some parts that you like and loop them. With the edit tools, select a portion of the audio and programming and loop it with the playback tool until it sounds like a good beat. Once you're happy with the loop, select the portion of audio you used and copy it.
Paste or duplicate the portion of audio or programming you chose for the loop, making sure that each new section aligns with the beat of the song. In Pro Tools, you can use the Grid function to help you align the rhythm. In Reason, use the Quantize function to fix the rhythm on misaligned loops and MIDI notes. Use Quantize sparingly; if you use it too much, the mathematically perfect rhythmic patterns can come off as robotic.
Play back your beat. If you have duplicated your loop correctly, the loop should repeat in a rhythmic pattern that is pleasing to the ear. At this point, you can add additional sounds within the same program or export the completed beat pattern to another audio program to process the sounds and add more quality and depth to the beat.