I'm pretty much just starting, starting to get serious with it at least. Could you tell me how long you've been making beats? Give me an estimated total amount of hours that sounds right to you.

Hours?.... Try years. The good thing about making music is that there's always something new to learn and fun stuff coming out. You just gotta keep at even when it doesn't seem like your progressing.

I have been making music for 613200 hours straight at least and counting no breaks .

haha^^ i'm at approximately 20,930 hours,take or give a few.

I've been making beats since I was 7 yrs old. Pops was a junk-man and one day he brought home two tape recorders, one for me and one for my brother. As soon as he taught us how to use them, we started making beat tapes recording rap songs off the radio and looping the drum break parts by recording to one tape player to the other. As we got older my brother pursued DJing and I continued the beat making with tape players. I wasn't turned on to the mic until my brother and his friends made a beat tape dissing me and my acne problem then. I made a little instrumental and wrote some rhymes and brought the rukus live on the block. That was the day everything changed.

^^That's so cute lol, I can just imagine you feeling all bad and then you're like "I'll get you yet!" and scurry to your room to start writing ferociously with some crazy storm outside your window. Then, you hold up your finished paper and start laughing uncontrollably while lightning flashes and the lights flicker in your room.

I started when I was 15/16 and I'm 23 now. I don't know how to convert that into hours...maybe like.. three kajillion.

lol Poor YoungHoon who started the same thread first, a few threads down with 0 replies I just saw it today and was confused.

Been making beats since i was about 19. I was going to parsons in NY at the time and this Japanese girl i knew bought a yamaha djx (not the 2, that shit sux) And we made beats and were recording them to her minidisc stereo (the only one ive ever saw) Then her boyfriend came down and recorded some raps so we ended up making a track with my beat and some rhymes. Thats what started it all. Went back to philly and bought a cheap ass keyboard from RadioShack and a 4 channel DJ mixer with 12 seconds of sample time. Wore that keyboard out, 6 tracks for recording notes, put everything i did on cassette tapes and played em all night.
Bought my first computer off some scientist for like 200 bucks and got into fruityloops. Stayed on software for a while and just recently got into hardware starting with a sp 555 and ending with an 808 and hopefully a 404 from lodger this weekend:) But i was heavily into producing from 19 to about 23, then i went back to school and had spirts of beatmaking and recording, then i got into hardware and just fell off, with work and everything.

started making tapes really young, mostly pretending to be a radio announcer inbetween songs i liked, then just messed with tapes, for a longtime, i had a casio rap man i used to record to tape but multi tracking wasnt even fathomable for me till about 10 years later, i broke every peice of gear ive ever had, and the only machine to ever survive my wrath is the 404. there is a few things glitchy because the knobs have been stepped on and some pads have been half gouged out by a 5 year old with a screw driver, but its still my main unit and i couldnt imagine trying to do anything without it, its like trying to write with out a pencil, using a computer is like a type writer. come to think of it i made better music with my 505. it sounded less harsh and the track mutes and pattern tempo memory made it so you can do mega mixes of all your music.the 404 you have to remember all the tempos of the patterns. after i messed with tapes around 15 I got a bass guitar for band class from my uncle who owned a pawn shop and let me pick one out. and i was the baddest ass dude in school because no one elsse played bass in band class. and i didnt even know how to read notes i just pretended to and would play along. ha and i passed, i ended up selling that bass to buy a skateboard tho. but ended up getting ripped off because it was a custom made 1 peice cherry bc rich bitch. worth a few grand. i was stupid. i started rhyming around 98 had mad shoe boxes full of raps and would get kicked out of class for writing raps and sketching burners instead of doing any mind control programming. i was listening to underground shit i recorded off a local hiphop radio show. i rhymed for about 2 years before i figureed out what multi tracking was, i was rap battling thugs in alleys , way before it was cool.
my polish hacker genius friend hooked my up with cool edit and fruity loops in 2001, it was an ok time to get into it because the technolgies were fairly young it was almost like witnessing a good portion of the digital revolution first hand, and only now realizing the layers of obfuscated complexity behind it all, so from 2001 to 2011, straight production, hundreds of tracks , some good alot bad. tons of albums, a few krews, and now making super scientific alien robot lazer noise.

LOL awesome Your Swamp Water Plague EP was dope man, loved that raw hip hop!

Me, I tried out FL Studio and started out making techno/trance/house music In february of 2008. I then I went on hiatus during my freshmen year of school and got into a J Dilla phase around April of 09. That's when I picked it up again and started focusing more on making "beats". Found hip hop to be a lot different from making techno, because I felt you had more freedom. So yeah, from that point on I kept at it, and still workin at it today. So I'd say a good 3 years in the production game.
The most important lesson I've learned is BACK SHIT UP OFTEN! So many depressing (external) hard drive failures. I have nothing that I've done before January of this year.

</my life story>

Oh yeah , I wanted to demolish them, they played that tape all over school and the block and everybody laughing at me. It was do or die right there.

@halcyon_rave - Hey thanks fam, and stick with the hardware and there'll be no need to deal with comps except net surfing.

1996

scratch dj up until 2002\then got a 303 when my crossfader died

9 years with a sampler

use to make loops with cd's on to tapes back in ?? the 90's....

..... ormo

This basically.

I've been making tracks since my teen days, and only three days ago, I bought me an SP 303 and now, it feels like day one all over again!

I like my DJX-II, it's got a lot of good stuff in there.

I've been making music since I was 13, so coming up on 20 years later this year. Making beats on and off for about 15. I always seem to be mixed up in band stuff when I want to be making beats though and vice-versa.

Hip Hop Ejay > Reason 2.5 > Reason 3 > SP404, SP 303 > Reason 4 > Logic

order of operations over the past 7 years.