If I wanted to start making some music as a side project and/or

Google these questions. It sounds like you have no fucking idea what you want to do. Asking giant general questions and wanting specific exacting answers is something a lazy fucktard does. Your music will probably suck ass.

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>>921390
A few years back when I played with making songs, I used Cakewalk Home Studio and it had everything for recording mixing down separate tracks of audio and MIDI.
You could use audio loops with it but it was not real easy to do.

If you want to make techno/loop music, then there is programs targeted at that--Fruityloops (now FL Studio) is a bigger one.

Plus there is freeware/Linux programs too. But they are usually pretty shit compared to the ones you pay for.

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As I saw it, PCs are great for mixing down but aren't real good at the actual "recording" part. You can easily spend $2000+ trying to build a PC that has the input ports you want, runs totally silent AND has no lag issues when recording.
Nowadays you can just go spend $300-$400 and get a portable multitrack recorder (flash or hard drive-based) and it is way easier to use, is portable, comes with phantom power XLR ports and has no noise or lag problems at all. You just gotta copy the recorded files onto your PC for mixing down and adding effects.

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