You can now find a lot of great techno music at JonLeger.com. In case you’re interested in creating music yourself, here’s how he does it:

FL Studio

His primary tool for creating electronic music is FL Studio. FL Studio has it all: a mixer, a sequencer, loads of special effects and filters. Truly fantastic. He strongly suggests you purchase a copy! It takes a while to get used to using it, but it really makes music-making a digital breeze.

MAGIX Music Editor 2.0

When Jon needs to modify, cut and paste the sounds he uses in his songs, he uses MAGIX. It was cheap — he got it at Best Buy for $30. It’s very handy for the wave-editing that FL Studio can’t do. He looked at their site (magix.com), but I couldn’t find it. Maybe they don’t sell it anymore?

Bink Video’s RAD Video Tools

He’s started making songs based on movies and TV shows that he likes, and sometimes it’s useful to extract sounds from the movie trailers and movie clips that are available online. To accomplish this he uses the RAD Video Tools from Bink Video. They’re donationware, so be sure to give them a few bucks if you find their stuff useful (he did).

Loops and Samples

Jon has purchased thousands of loops, samples and instruments for use in FL Studio. Two of the places he’s gotten the sounds from are PlatinumLoops.com and PeaceLoveProductions.com. Both have a large selection at reasonable prices.

Hardware

He uses an audio-technica studio microphone for vocals (AT3035), and an Edirol UA-25 USB Audio Capture device to record from the microphone. He loves the Edirol because it’s very small (perfect for my desk) and supports two studio microphones and has a digital output for headphones.

If you’re interested in creating your own music, he wants to tell you this: it’s a lot easier (and cheaper) than you might think. You don’t need a studio (even for vocals). He records vocals in his office at home. All of the software and equipment costs came to around $1,250 (including the loops). The equipment all fits on my desk, and the software runs on my home PC. FL Studio needs a good bit of memory, so Jon suggests you don’t have less than 1GB of RAM (that’s how much he has and it works fine).

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I recently witnessed some more real estate numbers about how the US housing market is diving. In Austin, Texas sales plummeted a quarter on pre-existing homes year over year yet the median price of used houses rose 7%. In places like Los Angeles, Nevada, Miami, California the story is much harsher with year-over-year sales down as much as 50% in some areas.

It’s easy to get discouraged in a real estate market like this one. Especially if you started investing in the last 5 years or so and haven’t seen these kinds of down markets before. Because real estate only goes up in value you were told. That’s true only if you buy at a real current market value and not an inflated euphoric value we saw from 2003-2005 peak. Or if you’re a home owner and bought your home in 2003 through 2005 you are probably licking your wounds because of the toll the major price hit has taken on your finances. It’s no secret the US economy and by extension the US realestate housing market and home price increases have been driven by vast consumer spending.

And this consumer overspending was fueled by far to easy to get credit cash and loose financing regulations which allowed easy access to home equity lines of credit. I just saw a headline in the magazine Newsweek which said if you have cash to invest with asset prices as low as they are there are tremendous deals out there and a high quantity of them. Also if you’ve been watching the news you’ve probably seen an endless parade of real estate experts.

The common theme I see from these so-called home experts is the prediction that 2009 will be more of the putridness 2008 has shown to home sellers. Not until late 2009 or early 2010 is the real property market predicted to show a turnaround. At this time they say year-over-year sales are expected to uptick as well as prices in the most battered markets in the US.

So bottom line, as an investor I recommend you treat 2009 as the once in a blue moon chance to supercharge your wealth it is. Finding a local mls search engine is a key to success in this tremendous buyer’s market. These cheap deals at ultra low prices may not be available again ever. Perhaps they return but it may be another five to seven years before you see this kind of opportunity again.

So spend more on marketing and your buying machine. Generate as many leads of home sellers as you can get your hands on. You may even want to look at multifamily investing, investing in mobile homes, or other such creative real estate tactics. Whatever marketing and direct mail you were planning to do double or triple it as far as you can push it. This is a time sensitive opportunity so maximize every advantage you have to fully capitalize on it. By doing so you’ll expand your actual wealth more than you ever imagined possible in such a short window of time.