I want to dedicate this post to 
@muphy, I really respect what he does here on Steemit.
Now I'll tell you what I do every night when everybody sleeps. Now I do it for my pleasure, but many years I was doing it for living.
I tried to write about my experiences with music production more than a year ago, but those posts weren't successful at that time. People just weren't interested but and I am thrilled because someone like
But let me make one thing clear: being an amateur in music production also isn't cheap!
If you use only your PC with the onboard sound card and a dynamic microphone, with some light DAW (digital audio workstation) you can make some things sound nice to you (but only to you) but when you export a mp3 and place it on a flash drive to listen the song in your car or on your mom's old radio, it will sound awful. When I was younger, I would burn my song on a CD and made a little tour visiting cars of my friends and their Hi-Fi systems. It is really disappointing how things can sound different (uglier) from device to device.
So, if you don't have some money to invest, you can't be neither the amateur.
But from my own personal experience, I know that the more professional equipment you own, the less true raw inspiration you will have.
When I was "underground", it was the most inspiring period of my life and later, when I managed to buy some pro equipment, I started to pay more attention to the details and things started to go slowly.
Especially when I learned about the frequencies, compression, panorama. So step by step, an amateur becomes a perfectionist and it is so frustrating! A perfectionist just hates all that he creates. Every little detail starts to bother you. Then, you start to miss the days when you were with no equipment, but full of awesome ideas.
I made my first hip-hop beat in 1998 when I was 13 on my first computer and I used demo version of software called Fruity Loops 1.5. I had bad PC speakers and I didn't have CD burner so I had to connect my PC with Hi-Fi and record the beat on the tape.
But very soon I became addicted to making those beats. My friends liked it and the whole hip-hop scene in my city actually started in my room.
Then I started to work with Propellerhead Reason. I also had Cool Edit (newer versions are known as Adobe Audition) to record vocals. My friend brought cheap dynamic microphone and we had to put a sock all over the mic head instead of pop-filter. For those who don't know, a pop-filter protects the microphone from the popping sounds. Then I moved to Cubase, Ableton and Logic and now I use more DAWs for just one thing.
So, at the very young age, I started to save money for the equipment!
First I needed a proper Audio Interface. Today I have RME Fireface but the first audio interface that I had was some cheap M-Audio, I don't remember the model. Then I needed studio monitors and I bought Yamaha NS7 and the amplifier for them. Well, today, 15 years later, I stayed faithful to Yamaha and I have two monitors Yamaha HS8 and the subwoofer HS8S, completed with a pair of KRK V6. My first condenser mic was some old Behringer that I bought from one old band from my town. I got the preamp for free! Today I have a legendary Rode NT1 and a pair of Se Electronics X1. Not much, but it fits in my workroom. I don't need to tell you about all components that I have, some are constantly in use, some were just once or twice.
And cables! I tend to keep my cables messy because my wife hates it and it keeps her out of my workroom.
The best parts of equipment that you simply can't without are - YOUR EARS! And the more you listen, the better and more reliable your ears will be! Practice makes perfect but there is a curse: perfectly trained ears can't stand that bad sound in the nightclubs, in cars... and you gotta live with it!