IF, like me, listening to the same 12 songs on repeat on Radio 1’s mind-numbing playlist makes you want to chop off your own ears with a fishslice, there are only three sensible options:

1 Turn it off.

2 Chop off your ears with a fishslice.

3 Write your own chart-topping hit.

Music production these days is so easy that any old Tom, Dick or Harry can do it. So what do you need? Firstly, a computer. Secondly, some software. Thirdly, some talent (optional).

The essential program you will need is a digital audio workstation (DAW). These all-singing all-dancing programs do pretty much everything you need, for varying degrees of cash.

Popular ones are Cubase, below, Logic, Reason, Ableton and FL Studio. Each has its own set of dedicated fans and its own strengths and weaknesses, so the best thing to do is download some demos and see which one suits you best. I use FL Studio, partly because it’s similar to old-style mod tracking programs like Fasttracker.

Don’t be fooled by the ubiquitous simplified loop-mixing programs. These are for losers.

Once you’ve worked out what you’re doing with your DAW — most of them are pretty complicated — the world is your oyster.

Nobody bothers with hardware synths any more — too much hassle with MIDI cables and suchlike, and take up too much space in your ‘studio’ (read: bedroom).

Get some soft synths instead and use a cheap controller keyboard (M-Audio is a good starting point) to map the knobs and sliders to physical controllers.

A decent set of headphones will make an adequate stand-in for a pair of ridiculously overpriced monitoring speakers.

If you’re serious, you’ll want to get an external sound card, which will have ASIO support (drivers that allow much better and faster sound processing) and proper input and output ports for your sound system and other bits of kit.

The single 3mm jack on most PC sound cards doesn’t really cut it.

Muso types will probably tell you to pick a genre and stick to it. Just ignore them and do what you like, but, it has to be said, if you want to produce something even remotely listenable, it’s a good idea to stick to the types of music that you actually know and listen to.

A great place to stay up to date on the current trends in dance music production is Beatport, where you can listen to clips of the latest songs in charts that are broken down into every sub-genre imaginable.