Welcome to the Marquette Journal’s beat making 101 course. It may seem technical, but in the 21st century, all you really need is a laptop, patience and some inspiration. Lucky for all you disc jockey wannabes out there, we scoured campus to find the very best DJs and their advice. Let’s get started.

First. Get a digital audio workstation (DAW) that works for you. Beginners should try Garage Band. “It’s good for beginners because one doesn’t need to have knowledge on how to use the program. It’s very intuitive,” said Charlie Giger, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, in an email. Giger produces his own beats and music, and has produced for client productions and MUTV, including the theme song for the sitcom “Campus Town.”

For more advanced technology, try industry standards like Logic Pro 9, Ableton Live, Pro Tools or Reason. According to Giger, Logic Pro 9 excels in track layering, but it’s only for Macs. Ableton Live is great for its stable ‘live’ performance mode and real-time mixing. Reason offers great synthesizer sounds.

Second. Choose a Musical Intrument Digital Interface (MIDI) controller or piano keyboard.

“Imagine the DAW is like an Xbox. You can’t play a videogame with just the Xbox, you need controllers. Those are the MIDIs,” Giger said.

The MIDI controller is not necessary to make music on your computer, but it allows you to have a hands-on experience in creating and manipulating the exact sound right from your own imagination, he said.

Third. Find your sound. Beats can stand alone or accompany bass and melody. It all depends on the style you want to produce: trance, dubstep or hip-hop.

Then comes the fun part — creating the track. Logistically, a track is comprised of a beat and a melody. The beat is the drum pattern, snare drum, claps, high-hat etc., and the melody is comprised of acapela lyrics, piano chords and music synthesizers.

“When I start out making a track, I start with the beat,” said Josh Arter, a senior in the College of Communication. “Once I have the drum pattern, I’ll sit down with a keyboard and just mess around until I find something I like and then go from there.”

Need inspiration? Listen to a variety of electronic music from DJs and producers. Hearing more than one style will encourage experimentation.

Finally. Master it. This final step is multifaceted. To “master” a beat means to balance, equalize and enhance the recorded sound. A DJ will be able to see the recording’s waveform, which illustrates its sound frequencies. Mastering includes compressing and equalizing peaks and troughs of the waveform to achieve the perfect sound.

This last step is what makes a beat sound good in your headphones. Mastering perfects a beat before you share it or make it available for download.

Learn your beats – New to the scene? Tune in to some of today’s hottest genres and get the party going.

Trance – “Trance puts more emphasis on synthesizer and melody. In house, it’s four to the floor, meaning, there’s a kick drum on every beat,” said Dan Mahoney, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Dubstep – Dubstep is in halftime, which means you hear high hat and snare drum on beats two and four. Mahoney considers it a lower energy genre of electronic dance music because you are hearing the beat half of the time (in comparison to house music).

Mashups – Mashups, on the other hand, require blending two or more prerecorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song over the instrumental track of another, according Arter, who has been producing beats on his laptop for five years. The key to a successful mashup? “It’s all about choosing songs with the same beats per minute,” Arter said.