in this video i'm looking at three
pieces of free music making software
that you should check out
if you're thinking of getting into music
production or maybe starting a bit of a
home studio
there are a lot of free daws or digital
audio workstations out there
but which ones aren't limited i'm zane
welcome to simple green tech where i do
weekly audio tech tips tutorials
and reviews to help you conquer the tech
and unleash your creativity now
the criteria that i set for these three
programs is
they had to be unlimited and allow you
to record
audio and midi links for all three of
the free music making software programs
are down
in the description along with time codes
for each one and i also have a couple of
honorable mentions that i'll have near
the end of this video so be sure to
stick around for that
now first up on the free music making
software list
is cakewalk by bandlab this one
used to be a premium paid for program
that was called
sonar platinum it went through some
ownership changes and now it's being
offered free
from bandlab some of the key features
about cakewalk
are you can have unlimited tracks both
audio
and midi plus auxiliary tracks it comes
with a decent selection of effects
plugins including three which is a great
sounding guitar amp simulator
it also comes with some decent
instruments like a drum kit
bass guitar piano and strings you also
get this channel strip over here which
has some great saturation effects for
your vocals and your instruments
and if all of those built-in plugins
aren't enough for you
you can also bring in your own
third-party vst plugins
which you can get for free or pay for
premium options
the piano roll is easy to access and use
plus there's a step sequencer that you
can use to build your beats with
there's also a convenient mixer view so
you can adjust the levels of your tracks
and access the effects easily making
music in cakewalk by bandlab is pretty
easy once you get over the learning
curve
which isn't too steep i have a tutorial
that goes through all of the basics of
getting started with cakewalk
check the description for that but right
now i'll quickly show you how easy it is
to load an
instrument plug-in up and start making
music even if you don't have a midi
controller
alright so i have a clean project open
here and what i want to do
is bring in an instrument so you go over
to this section here you click on
plugins if you're not clicked on it
already and then you want to click on
this icon right here and you can see all
of your instrument categories
so i want to bring in a drum instrument
and this is the one that comes with
cakewalk so you just click drag it over
to this area
let go and it's created a new track and
you can expand it by clicking there and
then if you click on
this icon right here it brings up
our drum instrument
so what i'm going to do is use the step
sequencer here
so right click go to view step sequencer
and you can increase the size of this
and here's our step sequencer and the
first thing i want to do is increase the
number of beats so i want it to be eight
just click there we're now at eight
beats
and we can easily draw in our beat here
so i kind of know where the different
drums are the bass drum is usually here
and then
you're going to have your snare there so
i'm just going to start
just by click there's bass drum
snare
and then up here we're going to have our
hi-hats
all right let's listen to how this
sounds
not too bad for just quickly throwing
something together there
and that's how easy it is to start
creating beats
in cakewalk now let's look at bringing
in
a bass instrument and we'll use the
piano roll for that
so i'm just going to click on bass here
and this is the base instrument that
comes with cakewalk so click
drag it over here expand this
if you want to see the bass instrument
there it is
and then this time i'm going to right
click view
piano roll and here's our piano roll
where we can
draw in some notes so i'm just going to
quickly draw in some notes here
let's listen to how this sounds now
all right doesn't sound too good but
that's just to show you how easy it is
to start
drawing in some notes now let's open up
the th3 guitar amp sim and test out some
of the presets
so you can see how easy it is to record
audio into it and you can also hear how
great the th3 guitar amp sim is
we'll start off with a clean tone here
what that sounds like
all right let's go to the crunch sound
okay see what else we have here
and now if we wanted to record this
we already have it armed for recording
we're ready to go
all right so we have the record button
here clicked and then we just want to
click on
this button here and it's going to start
the recording
and now there's our recorded track and
we can just play that back if we wanted
and the cool thing about recording with
a guitar amp sim
is if we don't like that tone we can
just change it because we didn't record
the tone
we recorded the raw guitar cakewalk by
bandlab is a great option for bands solo
artists
beat makers and anyone wanting to make
music really
it's extremely versatile and of course
the price is right
cakewalk is a 64-bit program and it's
available on windows
only the next free music making software
program that i'll look at
is tracktion waveform free i personally
use tracktion waveform pro as my main daw
and the free version is pretty much the
same thing so don't think that this is a
crippled version
of waveform pro some of the key features
of waveform free are
you can have unlimited tracks including
audio and midi plus auxiliary tracks
it comes with some decent effects
plugins but you'll likely want to add
more
which you can it includes the 4osc
synth that can produce some great sounds
and you also get the micro drum sampler
that has a couple of kits included
and they sound great for beat making
like i said earlier you can add third
party vst plugins very
easily the piano roll is easy to access
and use
plus like cakewalk there's a step
sequencer
there's also a convenient mixer view so
you can adjust the levels
of your tracks and access the effects
easily the user interface is very
intuitive and allows you to focus on
making music which is
what i love about tracktion waveform now
let me show you how easy it is to load
up the micro drum sampler
and make a quick beat without a midi
controller
of course if you have a midi controller
you can use that too
okay so i have a new empty project here
now if you were to load a project
it might look something like this with
these sidebars
i turn those off by clicking on the eye
here
and then the sidebar is gone now what we
want to do is bring in the micro drum
sampler so
just right click over here create a new
track and then
right click in this area of that track
add new plugin
go to waveform plugins instruments
micro drum sampler and this comes with
tracktion waveform free then if you click
in this area here
you can see we have two kits so i'm just
going to bring open the
micro 808 kit and we'll listen to that
pretty basic 808 kit now what we want to
do is
click this red cross here bring it down
let go and then for this i'm going to
insert a step
clip just to show you the step sequencer
but we could also
insert a midi clip which i'll show you
when we get to the 40SC
so here is our step clip and it even
shows you the name of the drums over
here
so let's just add those in by clicking
and this is just a very basic drum beat
here
now let's listen to how this sounds
like i said very basic drum beat but
this just shows you
how easy it is to use the step sequencer
in tracktion waveform
now let's bring in the 4osc so you can
hear what that sounds like
then you click in this area and you have
all of these presets here to start with
so let's just take our basic base here
we'll click the plus sign drag it drop
it down here
insert new midi clip then you double
click
on the midi clip and that brings open
the piano roll here
all right let's just draw in a basic
beat here
and let's hear what it sounds like with
our drum beat
all right not that good but here's a
cool thing you can do
in tracktion waveform so let's close down
this piano roll
click on the midi clip and if you go
over here to
pattern generator then click on pattern
style
go to baseline you can see it cleared
out everything i had in there
now we can go down to base preset and we
have all of these different baseline
presets down here so let's click on
edm2 and you can see it's created some
information in there for us
let's hear how it sounds
and that's working with midi without a
midi controller in tracktion waveform
alright so now i'm going to show you how
easy it is to record
audio into tracktion waveform so again
we'll go over here
right click create a new track and now
i'm just going to select the input which
is
input 2 arm it for recording
and if live input monitoring wasn't
selected
i would click it to select it and you
can hear my guitar now
so let's add a guitar amp sim and
waveform doesn't come with one so you
have to add a third party one
but there's lots of free ones out there
i'll link to my video with
a bunch of them in there and for this
demo i'm going to right click
add new plugin and i'm just going to use
this
black rooster audio cypress tt15
which is a free amp simulator now let's
just hear how it sounds quick
all right the tone's actually not bad
just with this default setting here so
i'm going to leave it at that
and we'll record it so you might want to
click on the click
track so you can have that metronome
sound
i'm i'm going to leave it off for this
because i don't really have anything
planned to record
and i'm just going to hit the record
button and we should hear a count in
and now you can see we have our audio
track here
and like before we can change all the
settings with it
and we can even change the amp sim if we
want this free daw is great for
bands musicians beat makers and anyone
into making music
waveform is a 64-bit program and it's
available on
mac windows linux and even
raspberry pi now before i get into the
third
free music making software on the list i
just want to ask if you're enjoying this
video and getting some value out of it
so far
can you please give it a thumbs up it
really helps my channel out and i
appreciate it so much
now the third free daw on the list is
soundbridge
now i first want to say that i'm not as
familiar with this one as i am with the
other two as i'm just starting to dig
into it and really get familiar with it
but i can
tell you this it's very easy to use and
it's not limited
in any way the goal of soundbridge is to
offer music creators a free program
that's powerful
and very easy to use some of the key
features are
you can have unlimited audio midi and
auxiliary tracks
a nice selection of effects are included
plus a channel strip with presets
you get the ritmix drum machine plugin
which is one of the best free drum
machine plugins available
the piano roll is easy to access and
simple to use
and there's also a mixer that allows you
to easily adjust
levels and more like the other programs
on the list
soundbridge makes it easy to start
making music whether you're a band
solo artist beat maker or whatever
so let's look at recording audio into
soundbridge
okay so i have a brand new project open
in
soundbridge and what i'm going to do is
click on this
plus sign here to add a new track
i'll give it a name and we now have an
audio track
but what i need to do is set the input
so i click here where it says none
go to external one two
minus two and then if i click this
i can monitor what's inputting so you
can hear my guitar now
now we want to add a guitar amp sim just
like we have with the other ones
so go down here to this icon
click on it and then you have your
plugins over here and you can see i was
searching for some here
but you could look through all of your
plugins if you have a lot like me it's
easier to just search
and i'm going to use the free guitar rig
5
player for this now i just double click
on that
and it's added it over there and i can
close that down now
so show plugin here we are
and now i'm just going to bring up a
preset in here
all right there we go we got our preset
let's hear how that sounds
not too bad maybe i'll try this
alternative crunch
there we go that's something a little
different and let's
record this now so we're already armed
for recording
everything's ready to go all we have to
do is go down here
click on record and we're recording
and there you go we now have our audio
clip all right so now we're going to
load the ritmix drum machine and
this will be the same for loading any
instrument really
so we click again on this icon here
and then we want vst3 because that's
what the Ritmix is
i'm going to type in rip mix and you can
see it comes up there
then just double click on that it
creates the track for us
i'm just going to close that sidebar
down
and then if we click on the track we can
see it over here
go to show plugin and here is our
ritmix drum machine plugin so
we can click on kits here you can see
all of the different kits that it comes
with
so i'm just going to choose this house
hit
kit and let's listen to what that sounds
like
okay let's try another kit we'll go with
stadium rock
so you can see we have our pads here
that you can click on
but another cool feature of the ritmix
drum machine is
the sequencer so you can actually
sequence your drums in here
so we could click on kick and you can
see it's already sequenced in here and
that's what we were listening to was
that sequence but i can add in more if i
wanted to
and then i would go to snare and i could
add in more snares
and let's just fill this up with hi hats
now let's listen to what this sounds
like
and there you go soundbridge is
available as a 64-bit or
32-bit option so if you need a 32-bit
program
this one is definitely the way to go
soundbridge is available on mac
and windows now before i get into the
couple of honorable mentions i want to
say that
as you can see these three programs that
i've already mentioned
are very similar in capabilities and
features
what it really comes down to for you is
the workflow and the user interface of
each one i recommend downloading two
or trying all three of the programs and
seeing which one
works best for your style don't listen
to the guys who say
well this daw is best or that daw is
best
figure out which one is best for you and
once you do figure that out
master that program get over that
learning curve it is going to take a
little bit to get over that learning
curve but they're not very hard to
figure out
so once you get over that learning curve
master the program get it all figured
out
and you're going to be making great
music with whatever program you decide
to go with
just master it and don't give up now
here are the honorable mentions and
first up is
the reaper daw this one isn't free but
you can download the demo that isn't
restricted at all
and you can use it for free for 60 days
now after the 60 days are over you can
continue to use reaper without
any limitations it just has a 5 second
pop-up window that comes up
every time you open the program
reminding you to purchase a license
if you do end up using reaper and you
enjoy it
be sure to purchase a license as it
helps to support the continued efforts
that they put into this great daw
the next honorable mention is pro tools
first
now this one is totally free but it is
limited which is why it didn't make my
main list
now the reason why i'm including it here
is because if you're thinking of taking
music production more seriously
and wanting to maybe work in a pro
studio one day
you should learn on pro tools as you're
likely going to encounter it in a lot of
studios
now the main limitations of pro tools
first are that you can only have
16 tracks which really isn't that bad
and you can't bring in your own
third-party plugins
however it does include some great
effects and a decent instrument
but if you want to add any other
instruments or effects you must purchase
it through the avid marketplace
now if you want to check out some of the
best free vst plugins available
click up here or click down here to see
what youtube thinks you should watch
next
if you like this video please give it a
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thank you so much for watching for
simple green tech
i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk
soon
