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Free Daw

#22
brianrost said:
It's not free, it's bundled with lots of hardware...interfaces, MIDI keyboards, etc. At one point I had about a half dozen licenses for Live Lite because of gear I had bought.
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I stand corrected. The Lite version is free with the purchase of a ton of different types of keyboard/etc. gear.

But I believe that you can get it for 90 days free trial without the gear. And the most full-blown version is not cheap, but it has awesome capabilities for both recording and producing music. For the years of programming that has gone into Live, it seems like a good value to me.

I write software for a living. Paying a reasonable amount for a great product seems, well, reasonable to me.
Free software is not sustainable, nor safe or practicle to use in the long run, IMHO.

YMMV :)
 
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#29
silky smoove said:
That’s not relevant to your question and my answer. You need to look at the owners manual specifically for input monitoring.
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You can look on the interface and see if it has a "Headphone" output. If it does, you can listen to your instrument through the interface. A main function of an interface is convert your signal for transfer via USB (usually to a computer to record). Audacity is a free download for Windows and is basic entry level DAW software with limited options. The concepts you learn with Audacity will carry through to other DAW products.

As others have mentioned Cakewalk is a full featured DAW that is truly free. It also provides the ability to share your music on the internet. I've been using a few years now and really like it, there are lots of YouTube tutorials available. The downside of "free" is there is not a tech support number you can call, it is handled by forum. It's a mature product and updates are provided regularly. Like any DAW product there is learning curve.
 
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#30
tothemax said:
You can look on the interface and see if it has a "Headphone" output. If it does, you can listen to your instrument through the interface.
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Indeed, but the OP’s follow-up question was this:
Dadaxe81 said:
A follow up question since I'm new to this. Do you have to have a DAW before you'll have any sound from the interface?
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Simply having a headphone out doesn’t tell you whether or not an interface provides input monitoring. There are many, particularly budget-friendly consumer-tier models that do not provide input monitoring and will require a DAW or at least the manufacturer’s mixer software to provide monitoring through software.
 
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#32
Dadaxe81 said:
nux mg 300 guitar pedal. Not for a bass but it might help me decide on that later on
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Not sure how a guitar pedal is going to help you record songs. If you just want to listen to yourself, fine, but if you want to record and multi-track, you will need an interface and DAW, or a recorder of some sort.

I guess you need to decide what you want to do. If you explain your final goals better, people here can help you.
 
#35
Basslice said:
IC. But if he is trying to record songs for a song competition it is not clear how just recording his bass through a guitar pedal is going to accomplish much more that single instrumental tracks. Maybe that is what he wants? Not really clear from the information he provided so far.
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Program drums, record bass track, program or record additional elements, edit, mix, master, bounce… song! It’s no different than the vast majority of recordings being done in 2022 in bedrooms all over the world.
 

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