Before you can begin, you'll need a piece of software to do all of your musical work in. Somewhere you can have multiple tracks of audio or sequenced MIDI notes, where you can apply effects and have everything musically in time. This is a Digital Audio Workstation.
Free
Bandlab Cakewalk
LMMS
Garageband (Comes with MacOS)
MuLab Free
Ohm Studio
Podium Free
Pro Tools First
SoundBridge
Studio One Prime
Tracktion T7
Trial version available
Ableton Live
Bitwig Studio
FL Studio
Mixcraft
Reaper
Reason
Renoise
Waveform
Less than $100
Ardour
Mixcraft Home Studio
Podium
Reaper
MuLab UL
Renoise
Mixcraft Recording Studio
Ableton Live Intro
FL Studio Fruity
Reason Intro
Studio One Artist
Cubase Elements
Less than $300
Waveform Basic
Waveform+
Mixcraft Pro Studio
FL Studio Producer Edition
Logic Pro X
Waveform Ultimate
FL Studio Signature
More than $300
Cubase Artist
Reason
Bitwig Studio
Studio One Professional
Ableton Live Standard
Cubase Pro
Pro Tools
Ableton Live Suite
FL Studio All Plugins
Pro Tools Ultimate
In the DAW, these are your tools to create and modify sound.
VST instruments are plugins you can load up and sequence notes with.
DSK Music
Sforzando (sfz/soundfont player)
T-Force Alpha Plus
Sonigen Modular
TranceDrive
Synth1
Dexed
SpicyGuitar
Iowa Flute
4front Bass
Orion Sound Module
Kong Audio
Virtual Playing Orchestra
smpld
Beat Zampler
bigcat Instruments
Magical 8bit plugin
Famisynth
SocaLabs 8-bit Treats
Proteus VX
EastWest Composer Cloud
Here are some presets to use with the instruments, as well as sample packs for sample players that work in pretty much the same way.
Trancedrive
Tonius 1
Tonius 2
Over 10000 Synth1 patches
Musyng Kite (soundfont)
Karoryfer Emilyguitar (sfz)
Multisampled electric guitar (sfz)
Multisampled bass (sfz)
Audio effects! Also useful if you're just mixing covers!
Sample packs: like an UTAU voicebank but for instruments. Usually for drum sounds!
And some other stuff you may find useful, like websites hosting many different kinds of plugins you can also check out.
How do you decide what notes to use? What sounds go together? How long should each part of the song be? That's what music theory is for, so dive in and find your inspiration.
Learning Music
8notes
UTAU-Based Classes
Chord Progression Generator
Hooktheory
Websites for guitar chords
http://www.guitar-chords.org.uk/ - Reference
https://jguitar.com/chordname - Enter strings/frets and get chord name
https://www.jamplay.com/tools/guitar-chords - Reference
http://www.all-guitar-chords.com/ - Reference
Sometimes it helps to have people show you the ropes
Sometimes it helps to just get inspired!
Lyrics, you can't have singing without em.
Written guides for songwriting and mixing
Lots of other resources to help you with music!
Songwriting Resources
Everything you need to write original songs
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WyndReed, 幸兔雪 (Yukito Yuki), MatitasXD and 15 others like this.
Recent Updates
- Fixed link and added descriptions Dec 30, 2018
- Revamped DAW section Dec 12, 2018
- Tracktion T7 is now free Aug 12, 2018
