Best software for beginners?

[xburtonchic]

I've always played around with producing, but it's always been just for fun and using programs like GarageBand. I didn't start seriously getting into it until recently, when I started actually teaching myself everything about sound design and understanding what I'm doing as opposed to just throwing together whatever sounds good, lol. I want to produce dubstep, moombahton, and happy hardcore, but mostly dubstep.

Any advice as to what the best software is for me to learn on and for what my goals are? Thanks!

[titchbit]

Ableton is pretttty rad m8. Worked well for me when I was a beginner. But honestly everyone will have a different answer. A lot of people love Logic, and since you're on a mac that might be worth looking into. FL Studio is out of the question because it's PC-only. The way I look at it is that these are the other top DAWs on the market: Reason, Reaper, Cubase, Renoise, and Pro Tools, and maybe a few others (Studio One, Acid Pro etc). My opinion is that Renoise, Pro Tools and Reaper are not good DAWs for beginners. Reason is probably more popular than Cubase and it comes with a lot of good VSTs, so I imagine that is good for beginners (not having to buy VST plugins).

So for you, this would be my rankings:

1st Tier (best DAWs for you): Logic, Ableton
2nd Tier: Reason, Cubase
3rd Tier (not for beginners IMO): Reaper, Pro Tools, Renoise
4th Tier: Studio One, Acid Pro, etc.

But whatever you decide to go with, when you first open it up, you probably will have no clue what is going on. So you should definitely watch tutorials on youtube in order to figure out the basics.

[Toolman4]

That was kind of debunked to do the justification and organization work for you.

Bottom line is, no DAW is beginner friendly. They are all in some way or another, overwhelming when you're a beginner. They are all capable, and unique in their own right. Because of that, the best chance you can give yourself to accelerate the learning process and build your skill set, would be to try those that have a demo, and watch videos pertaining to those that do not and those that do also (watch videos that you can relate to, like 'how to make reese in Reason/ableton/logic/etc)

When you do this, pay attention to which DAW scares you the least. It's going to be the one that makes you want to explore all the stuff that comes in the box, use it to create that which inspires, etc...When I loaded reason, I freaked the hell out. The analog interpretation of routing and organization scared the hell out of me b/c I didn't have any prior experience. Cubase was somewhat navigable but still felt 'archaic' to me. FL Studio's interface was just inhibiting for me and didn't create descent workflow for me. For whatever reason, and maybe because I was at a point where I was ready to commit, Ableton was my DAW of choice. It just facilitated my workflow style really well, and I felt like I could explore fearlessly.

I'm glad I took the extra time to do that too. You will thank yourself too. Cheers friend.

[ineffable]

I guess the whole thing when making music is that you HAVE to try it out, for example I think Ableton workflow is awesome for me, but some people don't like it. I tried using FL studio for a while also and I didn't feel comfortable, so just pick the one that you feel comfortable with and learn the fuck out of it.

[Crimsonghost]

Studio one might be one of the more intuitive daws out there. They have a free version (as well as demo versions) that's totally worth checking out.

Ableton is pretty much the standard in electronic music. It's not quite intuitive per-se but It does offer a lot of features that you won't find anywhere else.

Reaper is the cheapest of the bunch, and they have a very generous trial period. Aside from that I don't know too much about it. There's a lot of people around these parts that swear by it though.

Personally, I love studio one. Everything is very streamlined and well laid out. Check it.

[xburtonchic]

Thanks for all the awesome answers guys. I think I'm gonna go with Reason, my brother is a DJ and already knows about all this stuff, and he said he could hook me up with it for free. In the mean time, I'm still practicing with GarageBand, and learning how to use Maschine and Massive... my bro uses those ones, and was showing me some stuff last night, and it's WAY easier than I thought. Too bad those are expensive as fuck, gonna take me a while to save up the money to get everything I need I guess... it's worth it though.

[titchbit]

Ableton is pretty much the standard in electronic music. It's not quite intuitive per-se but It does offer a lot of features that you won't find anywhere else.

What makes Ableton the standard? I've never heard anyone say this. I've heard people say Pro Tools is standard and maybe Logic, but never Ableton. I'm not disagreeing, I'm just wondering what makes you say that. And I'd be interested to hear what features Ableton has that other DAWs lack.... I've never strayed too far from home so I don't really know how lucky I am if ya know wut I'm sayin.

[Add9]

Ableton is pretty much the standard in electronic music. It's not quite intuitive per-se but It does offer a lot of features that you won't find anywhere else.

What makes Ableton the standard? I've never heard anyone say this. I've heard people say Pro Tools is standard and maybe Logic, but never Ableton. I'm not disagreeing, I'm just wondering what makes you say that. And I'd be interested to hear what features Ableton has that other DAWs lack.... I've never strayed too far from home so I don't really know how lucky I am if ya know wut I'm sayin.

Well one thing that ableton has over logic is effects racks. I dunno if they changed it for logic X, but in logic 9 if you want to do multiband processing you have to send your sound to like 3 different buses... it's kind of annoying when in ableton you can do all kinds of processing within one rack and then toggle all of them on/off with one button. Also I'm pretty sure you can assign various parameters of different devices to macro knobs in ableton, which logic 9 doesn't let you do.

Again I don't really know what they improved for logic X but those were some of the main features of ableton that I wish logic had.

[titchbit]

^Interesting. I also own Logic, but haven't used it much. Thinking about getting into it for the sample library and VSTs that come with it. Are they good? Compared to Ableton of course, which has very little.

[mthrfnk]

Ableton is pretttty rad m8. Worked well for me when I was a beginner. But honestly everyone will have a different answer. A lot of people love Logic, and since you're on a mac that might be worth looking into. FL Studio is out of the question because it's PC-only. The way I look at it is that these are the other top DAWs on the market: Reason, Reaper, Cubase, Renoise, and Pro Tools, and maybe a few others (Studio One, Acid Pro etc). My opinion is that Renoise, Pro Tools and Reaper are not good DAWs for beginners. Reason is probably more popular than Cubase and it comes with a lot of good VSTs, so I imagine that is good for beginners (not having to buy VST plugins).

So for you, this would be my rankings:

1st Tier (best DAWs for you): Logic, Ableton
2nd Tier: Reason, Cubase
3rd Tier (not for beginners IMO): Reaper, Pro Tools, Renoise
4th Tier: Studio One, Acid Pro, etc.

But whatever you decide to go with, when you first open it up, you probably will have no clue what is going on. So you should definitely watch tutorials on youtube in order to figure out the basics.

Why is Studio One 4th tier in your oppinion?

[titchbit]

Ableton is pretttty rad m8. Worked well for me when I was a beginner. But honestly everyone will have a different answer. A lot of people love Logic, and since you're on a mac that might be worth looking into. FL Studio is out of the question because it's PC-only. The way I look at it is that these are the other top DAWs on the market: Reason, Reaper, Cubase, Renoise, and Pro Tools, and maybe a few others (Studio One, Acid Pro etc). My opinion is that Renoise, Pro Tools and Reaper are not good DAWs for beginners. Reason is probably more popular than Cubase and it comes with a lot of good VSTs, so I imagine that is good for beginners (not having to buy VST plugins).

So for you, this would be my rankings:

1st Tier (best DAWs for you): Logic, Ableton
2nd Tier: Reason, Cubase
3rd Tier (not for beginners IMO): Reaper, Pro Tools, Renoise
4th Tier: Studio One, Acid Pro, etc.

But whatever you decide to go with, when you first open it up, you probably will have no clue what is going on. So you should definitely watch tutorials on youtube in order to figure out the basics.

Why is Studio One 4th tier in your oppinion?

I guess I just don't know much about it. I didn't think it was as good as Reason/Cubase. Thought it was more like a limited DAW such as Acid Pro. I could very well be wrong though. I'm mainly basing that opinion off my perception of how popular it is because I figure popularity and quality must have some positive correlation.

[Add9]

^Interesting. I also own Logic, but haven't used it much. Thinking about getting into it for the sample library and VSTs that come with it. Are they good? Compared to Ableton of course, which has very little.

If you already have some good 3rd party VSTs then you won't really need anything that comes with Logic. I don't really think the synths are that great with the possible exception of Sculpture which is a pretty unique sounding physical modeling synth. The ES2 is probably the best synth in Logic but any good VST will outperform it. I know they added some new synths in Logic X so I'm not sure if they are any good.... apparently there's a good FM synth in Logic now, but I would be surprised if it's better than Operator.

The sample library in Logic is okay, and the EXS24 is a capable (if atrocious-looking) sampler, but I almost never use Logic's stock samples because stuff from Vengeance and other places is just so much better. (I've downloaded pretty much every sample pack from MusicRadar, lol). I suppose Ultrabeat is a useful tool for programming and synthesizing drums, but working with it really killed my workflow and caused me to be lazy with drum programming so I never use it anymore.

So in conclusion, as much as I like Logic, I think I would choose Ableton if I could start over again. I really think the effects in Ableton are noticeably superior to those in Logic, and the workflow in Ableton is so much more streamlined for the production of electronic music.

[mthrfnk]

Ableton is pretttty rad m8. Worked well for me when I was a beginner. But honestly everyone will have a different answer. A lot of people love Logic, and since you're on a mac that might be worth looking into. FL Studio is out of the question because it's PC-only. The way I look at it is that these are the other top DAWs on the market: Reason, Reaper, Cubase, Renoise, and Pro Tools, and maybe a few others (Studio One, Acid Pro etc). My opinion is that Renoise, Pro Tools and Reaper are not good DAWs for beginners. Reason is probably more popular than Cubase and it comes with a lot of good VSTs, so I imagine that is good for beginners (not having to buy VST plugins).

So for you, this would be my rankings:

1st Tier (best DAWs for you): Logic, Ableton
2nd Tier: Reason, Cubase
3rd Tier (not for beginners IMO): Reaper, Pro Tools, Renoise
4th Tier: Studio One, Acid Pro, etc.

But whatever you decide to go with, when you first open it up, you probably will have no clue what is going on. So you should definitely watch tutorials on youtube in order to figure out the basics.

Why is Studio One 4th tier in your oppinion?

I guess I just don't know much about it. I didn't think it was as good as Reason/Cubase. Thought it was more like a limited DAW such as Acid Pro. I could very well be wrong though. I'm mainly basing that opinion off my perception of how popular it is because I figure popularity and quality must have some positive correlation.

It's made by ex-developers of Cubase/Nuendo... it's a fully fledged DAW comparable to Ableton/FL. Pretty damn good imo from when I trialed it. It's just not as popular because it's so much newer.

[Soul_Of_Seun]

I've only used Fl Studio and I quite enjoy it. I find it not terrible difficult to import VST's samples etc. I've heard it described as the most user friendly DAW. I do agree that any DAW will take time to learn as I've onl briefly messed about in Ableton and it didn't look any easier or more difficult than FL. The one thing that drives me nuts about FL is there doesn't seem to be a way to clear a mixer channel with any ease. If you want to revert a channel to default state you have to find the default mixer preset. But that doesn't clear un-assign the channel to that mixer.

Any, still a very good product.

[mromgwtf]

dubturbo

[OfficialDAPT]

What worked for me was starting off in FL Studio. After a couple months of using that I switched to Ableton and have been using that for the past year and a half. I love the workflow in Ableton but IMO it has a steeper learning curve than FL Studio. FL Studio has better synths built in, but if you were to buy Komplete 8 or another vst bundle, I'd definitely recommend looking into Ableton because of the workflow benefits.

[xburtonchic]

What do you all think of Maschine and Massive?

I was gonna use Reason but maybe I'll use Ableton instead...

[titchbit]

Can't really comment on Maschine, but Massive is a great synth. It is very mainstream and is the synth of choice for brostep noobs, but it's still a good synth.

[Crimsonghost]

What do you all think of Maschine and Massive?

I was gonna use Reason but maybe I'll use Ableton instead...

Maschine comes with Massive.

Just putting it out there.

[Crimsonghost]

But, honestly, you can build about 90% of a song in Maschine. The only problem is when you come to your final mix down and mastering.