The best free music making software 2018. Before we dive in and give you our top five best free music-making apps for Mac and PC, we'd better lay down a few ground rules. Purchase or download music-making software. Ableton Live, Reason, and/or FL Studio are good programs that you can use to help you to make beats, breaks, and a bass line. (Or, if you own a Mac, try GarageBand or EasyBeat, or Logic Pro for more advanced composing.
Have you ever wanted to produce electronic dance music? Today we will show you how to make your own music and how to make electronic music. If you wanted to learn how to produce electronic music online, where would you start?
There are a lot of online training websites and EDM music production classes out there trying to teach you how to make your own music but none have explained it this easy before.
For all our EDM news readers; Or those who are new to producing electronic dance music, A DAW is a computer software Digital Audio Work station. Every digital audio workstation (DAW) is different, and made by different software companies worldwide.
The Ultimate DAW Guide
This guide will help you find the best DAW for you to make EDM, electronic music or any other genre of music.
There is a lot of different DAW’s to produce with these days, We have seen a lot of other EDM news websites try and review the best music production software with failed attempts so we have rounded up the top 5 best DAW’s for our readers. This article will help you choose the best DAW so you can learn how to make dubstep, trance, house or how to make any other type of beats. Once you have mastered a DAW, your music production possibilities are endless.
If we forgot something feel free to add it in below in the comments sections.
Producing Electronic Music with Digital Audio Work Stations
Starting your own personal recording studio is not cheap. Many underground EDM artists and Top 100 DJs prefer to do their own recording and producing in the comforts of their own home/studio. With todays technology being so advanced, It is now possible for the average person to learn how to produce music with studio software.
Read: What is a VST?
Advanced software now allows an individual to produce professional electronic music from a home studio, And VST plugins help reduce buying clunky heavy music equipment along with saving physical studio space. So lets take a look at the top music production software programs available today.
Top 5 Best DAW’s for EDM Artists
1. Ableton Live (Windows + Mac)
One of the simplest DAW’s to produce any genre of music with, Ableton is not only great for producing songs in the studio with, But its great for performing live with thanks to its ‘Clip View’.
Ableton Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for composing, recording, arranging, mixing and mastering. Ableton Live is also used by DJs and other EDM artists because of its capability to control for beat matching, cross fading, and other effects used by EDM artists. With the first version of Ableton released as Live 1 on October 30th, 2001, Ableton was one of the first music applications to automatically beat match songs.
Ableton Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for composing, recording, arranging, mixing and mastering. Ableton Live is also used by DJs and other EDM artists because of its capability to control for beat matching, cross fading, and other effects used by EDM artists. With the first version of Ableton released as Live 1 on October 30th, 2001, Ableton was one of the first music applications to automatically beat match songs.
Ableton Views
Ableton Live is composed of two ‘views’ – the arrangement view and the session view (clip view).
Session view ( Clip View)
The session view mostly used to organize an sets of MIDI and audio called clips. These clips can be arranged into scenes which can be clicked and played live on the spot, in real time. For example a drum, bass, and guitar track might be in a single scene. The next scene can be the break in the song and only contains the bass and guitar now, with the drums removed and not playing. The DJ or EDM artist can then go back to the main chorus of the song by clicking the scene that will trigger all three tracks to play again at the same time, Drum, Bass and guitar. Clips may either be an audio sample or MIDI sequence.The DJ or EDM artist can keep switching between the scenes as much as they would like, Ableton will keep playing it over and over until another scene is selected to play. As of Live 6, “device racks” have been implemented and allow the user to easily group instruments and effects, as well as map their MIDI controllers to a set of ‘macro’ controls.
Arrangement view
The other view is the arrangement view, which is best for producing the full song once it is completed in clip view. Arrangement view is used for recording tracks from the session view and further manipulating their arrangement and effects. Arrangement view is also used for manual MIDI sequencing, something for which a classical composer would have a greater time with. This view is fairly similar to a traditional software sequencer interface.
2. Bitwig (Windows, Mac + Linux)
Bitwig Studio
One of the newest DAW’s on the market, and very similar to Ableton Live, This brand new German software company is an off shoot with some of the former Ableton employees who decided Ableton need some better features.
Bitwig takes second place on our list for their innovative new software ideas and creative programming. Still very new, This German software company looks very promising; Even Deadmau5 has shown interest in producing with Bitwig studio. Cant wait to see what else they will be coming up with.
3. Steinberg’s Cubase (Windows + Mac)
One of Stimmings favorite DAW’s, Cubase is a very precise DAW for those who have OCD or love to be exact with things.
With the first version of Cubase release in April of 1989, It was Originally called Cubeat, later on Cubit, but changed to Cubase due to trademark issues, this was the successor to Pro-24.
Cubase for Atari was MIDI only and ran on the Atari 520ST and Atari 1040ST computers. The main innovation of Cubase was the graphic arrange page, which allowed for the graphic representation of the music composition using a vertical list of tracks and a horizontal timeline. This was much more intuitive and allowed much easier producing and editing than the previous systems of complicated lists and menus of text. It has since been copied by just about every other DAW today and is the standard for how we produce music visually.
Viewed largely as the pioneer of music software, Steinberg was technically the first DAW ever made, and has come a long way since then 1989.
4. Apple’s Logic (Mac Only)
Apple Logic
One of the more simpler DAWs, Logic has come a long way over the years. Originally created by a German software developer called C-Lab, and later Emagic, Logic Pro became an Apple product when Apple bought Emagic out in 2002. Available only thru the Apple App Store, Logic is available for Mac computers only, Sorry windows users.
5. Imagine Line’s FL Studio (Windows + Mac)
Image Line is a privately held software company that started in 1994. Imagine Line has been known to be one of the leading DAWs known to recruit the most basic music producer, Mostly EDM artists and hip hop producers. Growing rapidly over the last decades, The FL Studio team of software developers has created some very inspiring products.In 2007 Image-Line introduced Deckadance, a virtual DJ console application, The company also produces the semi famous VST audio plugin Sytrus, a built in VST that comes with FL Studio. Sytrus uses a combination of subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis, FM synthesis and ring modulation, Which allows any sounds like a drum set or organ sound to be produced within the synth.