What DAW is the best one to use? The answer is simple: The one you know the best!
There are a ton of amazing free DAWS if you’re just getting started, that’s a great place to start. Here in Los Angeles every one of the remaining major studios such as Sunset Sound or United Recording have Pro Tools Rigs in every control room, large HDX rigs with multiple outputs feeding large format consoles. Increasingly these studios see sessions where Producers and Artists bring in their own setups to utilize their amazing sounding live rooms, massive mic collection and Class A recording consoles.
Bonus: CLA Epic Plugin Review
There are now many options in DAWs, the older ‘legacy’ DAW’s like Pro Tools have amazing audio editing capabilities that I find incredibly easy to use. Although a mainstay with Rock Producers, not everyone uses Pro Tools. Producers, Songwriters and Mixers like Ulrich Wild and CJ Vanston both use Logic and make amazing music. CJ as an accomplished Keyboard player who navigates Logic with ease and Ulrich mixes great Heavy Rock. Both of them believe that Logic’s stock plugins give third party plugins a run for their money.
Our good friend David Mood is a Studio One Expert who has shared many tips with us, Reaper has many amazing followers and FL Studio is the main stay of Mick Gordon, virtuoso Rock Guitar player and Video Game Composer. I made an album with Paul Gilbert and he used Nuendo, he flew around that program with ease and the results were superlative!
I take on many apprentices from Recording Connection, in fact my main Engineer, Eric Gonzalez, is a Recording Connection Graduate. One of our new Apprentices is Alex Valente, Alex is young guy who has embraced Ableton as his DAW of choice, making great Dance and Hip Hop tracks!
Of course you can create EDM and Hip-hop with all of the DAWs we mentioned, Virtual Synths and a myriad of third party plug ins enable us to create amazing music. However, Ableton is the one DAW that keeps coming up again and again in these genres.
In this video Alex takes us through the basics of Ableton, I learned a lot from this video myself! I recently downloaded the trial of Ableton after working with the Producer Salaam Remi when we were working 5 Seconds Of Summer together, I was very impressed with what Salaam was able to do quickly and highly creatively! Ableton has the reputation for being extremely easy to use and very intuitive!
More Music Production Tutorials from Produce Like A Pro:
Now it’s your turn: What is your favourite DAW to use and why? I’m looking forward to learning more and hearing your insights!
Have a marvellous time recording and mixing,
Warren
