Creating your own music can often be very challenging and expensive. I have picked some of the best software, in each skill level to help you make awesome music.
Propellerhead – Reason (Professional)
Price: £405
http://www.propellerheads.se/products/reason/
Reason is a music recording and production studio. Reason let’s you create your entire song with unlimited audio tracks and professional level mixing.
Reason features thousands of sampled instruments (many you will have to buy in a pack), which you can use when you plug in your musical keyboard. You can make a £100 keyboard sound like a professional £20,000 piano.
Avid – Pro Tools (Professional)
Price: £550
http://www.avid.com/US/products/pro-tools-software
Pro Tools is a recording and production suite. Pro Tools is widely used by many of the top composers.
In the latest pro tools you can interleave various audio file formats with different bit depths. This is very useful for pro’s when they need to use different samples from different sites etc. The tool also features virtual instruments, midi editor and many more great tools.
Apple – Logic Pro (Intermediate)
Price: £125
http://www.apple.com/logicpro/
Logic pro is apples answer to a semi-professional tool. Logic pro was designed to be a step up from garage band.
The tool is based on garageband but offers many more advanced features such as improved editing and mixing.
Apple – Garage Band (Amateur)
Price: £10.50
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
Garage band is a very simple to use production suite. It features many features such as built in loops, virtual instruments and mixing.
The tool is very cheap to buy and you can easily create music tracks without much knowledge of music. When you feel like you need a better tool, you can upgrade to logic pro and all your projects will get converted to logic pro without hassle.
Audacity (Amateur)
Price: Free
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Audacity is a free audio editor. It’s great for recording music and offers many effects, which can be applied to your recordings such as echo, phaser, wahwah and reverse.
Audacity is definitely worth checking out as it’s free and you can do quiet a lot with it.
Recommended Mentions
Cubase – Steinberg
Price: £488
http://www.steinberg.net/en/shop/buy_product/product/cubase-65.html
Ableton Live 8
Price: £449
http://www.ableton.com/live-8
You can’t skip Ableton Live and Cubase.
Both run great on the Mac and belong in the top 3 next to Logic Pro.
Homework!
Ah yes, cubase was actually on my list before and i forgot to add it. I’ve not used ableton live before.
Live is one of the best daws out there. I use it the most and have used logic and cubase a lot in de past.
Hi, I recommand the amazing Renoise ! (a new generation of fastracker like software for modules composition, it is really amazing)