to your sound problem check your sound mapping on your programs or your voulme control settings i'm not too sure what to do but i had that problem before.

for equipment. You wanna go the sampling and MIDI way. But dont go spend a shit load of money to buy a sampler just use a software to do that. as for Keyboards you might wanna consider a Korg those have really nice sounds and banks on them and now they come with MIDI software. However the software cost extra so if you want you can download Cubase which is really tuff for MIDI however you cant really export as an audio file. So you can just get Acid Pro cuz it has a MIDI recording feature. OTher than that man you gotta have really good ideas for beats and musical talent (harmonizing,rythm,musical structure, arranging etc.) and really tuff samples. thats pretty much what you need. In my opinion. PEACE

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