Check out my tutorial which is an intro to music software .
I go and explain software, and how plug-ins work.
For tutorials, get comfortable with music theory. Learn all your major scales, your major chords, how to turn a major chord into a minor, your notes, rhythm, and inversions.
Also check out my intro to arrangement article as I explain how most songs are arranged.
How I learned to produce was trial and error, and getting feedback from peers. Send me anything and I’ll give feedback.
id recommend FL studio for its diversity.
Sorry if I am late to this, but I think the better choice would be lmms for a beginner composer. Once you get the hang of composing, you could consider changing to FL studio or ableton. (In my personal opinion, FL Studio is much better then ableton)
From what I know, Soundtrap might be your best bet. It’s free and easy to use. I don’t know much about composing music, but I used it to make a podcast. It has plenty of tools at your disposal, and I think you’ll really like it. Good luck!
Or you can use LMMS, its good too
A free one is Cakewalk by bandlab.
I use Logic Pro x as I am on mac. I recommend Logic Pro X if on mac or Ableton or even Protools.
I wouldn’t recommend FL studio much. It is easy, but eh not the best.
Reaper has a good free trial.
Plugins wise:
Fabfilter
Waves
Ozone
Edit: suggestion addition
Keep in mind you don’t need to have a big old studio. An amazing track doesn’t always come from a big studio. Ideas are not limited by budget. Ideas come from your head. Not your equipment. I made that mistake when starting out.
Bandlab! It is free, and it is online, no downloads needed!!! It is kinda like Instagram but with music.
Please don’t crack. It takes away the money from the hard - working creators of the app. Instead, I’d recommend using Soundtrap’s free version.
True, but some of the more expensive libraries have the more natural sound to them that we are after in our music. When it comes down music plugins it is very annoying that a lot of them are super expensive. However, I do normally use a lot of the factory logic pro plugins as they are pretty high quality.
I like to use Beepbox.co but I mean it’s made for chiptune stuff only but its free, easy to use, and no login!
I know that it’s bad and all, but softwares made by big companies like Adobe and Image-Line aren’t going to die because of a single person doing so. If I wanted to quickly use a software for something or just a tiny experience, I would do so, if I had a regular use for that software I would buy it as a way of appreciation.
It is still against the law…
In terms of 8 or 16 bit type music, I like to use a free program called BoscaCeoil Although, this really doesn’t help with other type of music than that, and you’ll have to have a program to transfer a .wav file to a .ogg or .mp3
This is quite off-topic so we should end the discussion but “illegally downloding” is something almost everybody doesn’t care about.
Doesn’t FL Studio let you use it as long as you want freely with the requirement that you cannot save/load your progress so practically you must be on the window until you finish creating your piece?
I am not really sure never used it, but the fact that you can’t save/load if you’re not registered sounds a bit lame, I think they just have a free trial period.
It says on the website you can’t load saved projects nor use functionalities related to saving projects but exporting to wav & mp3 is allowed for the free trial, it also states unlimited time for the free trial.