Yes, if you want to make serious money, you should be capable of making your own beats. You need to have the equipment and skill necessary to get the job done. It's not expensive if you use your existing computer and know where to look for free and inexpensive software.
Before you begin, you should determine how much you want to invest. Not only in money but even more importantly , how much TIME do you want to invest?
You can make your own beats 100% from scratch. That is to say, you lay down the drums, bass line and other musical elements all created by you. To do this, you need to know a bit about computer software, music theory and have a basic understanding of how to construct a song.
This type of beat making is highly rewarding for the creative type of beat maker. It's like playing God. You create a new thing in the universe.
Maybe that sounds a bit dramatic, but until you have done it, you won't know how it feels.
A cousing to this type is sampled beat making. This is consider by some to be the true essence of a hip hop beat. In this mthod you sample a part of a song that has already been recorded and released and remix it into something new with a banging hip hop style beat. To be really successful with type of beat making, you must be able to get the samples "cleared" before selling it.
There are other levels of time you can invest. For example, you might want to use pre-made loops and sounds to make your beats. This way you need less time invested an for a newbie, you will probably get better results faster. Programs like Hip Hop eJay
and ACID Pro 7
are famous for this type of beat making.You can also choose to buy beats from other people with the intent of reselling them.
And finally a rather new player to the beat making game is online beat making. Using these services is like using a mixture of loop based beat creation and from scratch.
Whichever mode you choose, just remember you can always switch or mix and match to get the best results.
