I first dabbled with MIDI back in 1994, using Cakewalk running in DOS. That’s text-only Disk Operating System for those of you born into the current GUI (Graphical User Interface)-only world. Since then, I’ve only briefly tried making MIDI based music once again in year 2006, and that was it, until now. How the world has changed! I think most of the music you hear today are generated using MIDI and you can’t tell the difference anymore, between generated music and actual recording of real instruments.
Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is a brand new term to me, as MIDI software was just called that, MIDI software tools. And there are so many competing products today, to the extent that you can get them for free (yay!). Plus, there are also many good quality virtual instruments available for free. This means anyone can make serious music entirely for free. Having gone through the somewhat painful process of setting up a DAW together with a decent collection of virtual instruments, I will share the steps in this post to perhaps ease your pain if you’re about to begin your journey in the same direction.
Continue reading “Newbie’s guide to setting up a free DAW”