I have installed 'Reason' software and have a midi keyboard (that won't work with my current nvidea soundcard) and want to get into making music on my PC. I have managed the basics so far but it is a little time consuming.

What do people recommend re equipment? I also have a Yamaha electronic drum kit that can be midied but it is all a bit beyond me. I don't want to spend a fortune, just mess about and make some music.

My set-up is pretty basic, but I get reasonable results. All I use is Cubase VST, a midi keyboard that set me back £110 - a real cheapy, and a soundcard that allows me to record at the same time as playback. The only limitation for the number of channels I can mix with is the speed of my processor (and the soundcard itself). I'm currently limited to 8 channels.

Create a master track in Cubase (exports as a stereo .wav file), and there you have it. A really basic system that lets me pretend I've got talent. When I haven't.

Bloomdido,

There's no reason why your midi keyboard shouldn't work with your souncard's midi port, Midi is a standard protocol dating back to the early eighties and you can't get much standarder than midi.
As long as you have the cables plugged in the right way round and the midi ports and channels selected in the software, things should be all go. eg, midi in (soundcard) to midi out (keyboard) etc.. In the midi options in readon be sure the correct midi ins and outs are selected..
Other possible problem causers could be:
you are active on midi chanel 1 in Reason but your keyboard is active on another channel - set the keyboard to ch1.
It could be that either the keyboard or soundcard are faulty or dodgy midi leads. Try http://www.midiox.com for a proggy that lets you see your midi activity.
Other than that you could spend a bit of dosh on some new equipment. For Reason you could go for an M-audio Oxygen8 <£100 http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_gb/Oxygen8-main.html which is nice as it's USB/midi, compact and has eight rotary knobs which you can assign to almost any parameter in Reason (such as volume, pan, cutoff freq, lfo speed etc..)