Discussion
I was thinking of which software I actually used to make music though the years, so here is a chronological list:
- Wavelab (One track, overdub)
- Fruity loops
- Dance- and HipHop Ejay
- Cubase
- Logic Pro
- Studio One
- Ableton Live
- Bitwig
What’s your journey?
@mosgaard trying to remember the early midi programs I used on the Mac in the 90s… after some research, these ring a bell: Master Tracks Pro & Metro (I think there was one called Beyond, too). Also dabbled with Finale back then.
Then I settled on Digital Performer for the longest time, and Reason, before switching to Logic after Apple bought it and made the interface understandable to me, and which I use to this day. I also use GarageBand a lot on iPad, generally in bed with my morning coffee.
@mosgaard in a very rough order, with stuff i’m actively using starred
• tascam portastudios (cassette)
• jeskola buzz
• audacity
• rebirth*
• fruity loops
• ableton live
• renoise*
• wavelab*
@mosgaard Oh wow, I don't remember all the demos and free versions of things I tried back before I knew how to do anything. (I still don't know much)
But once I tried to really learn, it was something like:
Ableton Live
Reason
Pro tools (I got a full demo as part of a class)
Studio One
Harrison Mixbus
Studio One (for music with recordings of live instruments)/Ableton Live (for noise music)
Voyetra Digital Orchestrator Plus
Cakewalk SE (? whatever the "lite" version was in '97)
Cakewalk Pro Audio
Sonar
energyXT
Reaper
With some Buzz, Bidule, and Bespoke Synth on the side at various points.
A pretty short list for me:
Finale (tried and didn’t like it)
Samplitude
Sibelius
Reaper
There was something before Finale too, an early Mac notation program that wasn’t very good. I stuck with pen and paper for a very long time, because I liked calligraphy, and notation software at first wasn’t really faster—except for extracting parts. That’s what made me switch finally. Samplitude/Reaper were mainly just for editing concert recordings.
@mosgaard Oh my... Something like this, if I recall correctly:
* Amiga 500:
- NoiseTracker
- OctaMed
- Bars and Pipes (sidequest)
* Atari Falcon:
- Digital Tracker (had like 16 tracks on that thing)
- Sweet Sixteen (sidequest, MIDI sequencer)
* Windows:
- FastTracker 2
- Emagic Logic (purchased in 1998) up until Apple bought it
* Mac:
- Apple Logic/Logic Pro up until version 10 (on a Hackintosh the last few years)
- Bitwig
* Linux:
- Bitwig
- Ardour (current sidequest)
@mosgaard Cubase (Atari STe then TT030); Logic; Pro Tools; Reaper (a bit); now giving Ardour v.9 a go. All on Macs various.
@PaulNickson they have really done a great work with the Ardour v.9 update, I have it installed too.
@mosgaard They really have. I tried v 8.12 and had to give up on it due to screen redraw issues (Mac) and Inst. plugins muting the wrong way when muted/soloed (The Inst.’s MIDI was muted instead of the audio output from the plugin - that took me a while to convince them!)
Other DAWs I’ve used but only just remembered: SADiE and Pyramix.
@mosgaard
- Band In A Box
- Garageband
- Garageband
- Garageband (I picked it back up a few times 😁)
- n-Track Studio (test)
- MTP Beats (test)
- Ardour
- Reaper
@mosgaard
Cubase
Cubase w/Reason
ProTools w/Reason
just Reason
(I still like Reason!)
@kingdomkrumb that's great! I tried Reason a couple of times, but never really got into the workflow. But have been using the plugin-version ever since, to get access to mostly the samplers.
What kind of music do you produce with it?
@mosgaard Most of my stuff is sorta like bedroom pop. Traditional pop song structures with a mix of acoustic instruments plus synths and drums. I also use it to add to arrangements of rock recordings. I've just always found Reason to be a very creative tool. Comes with a great selection of instruments, synths and effects. And it's a completely stand-alone DAW now.
@kingdomkrumb love the instruments and effects too, that's also why I have used the plugin version.
I had a really hard time adapting to the workflow, but I could easily imagine, that if you learn the workflow from ground up, it can be a really strong tool.
@mosgaard
I never forget :
- Cubase 2 (Atari ST)
- Pro 24 III (Atari ST)
- Cakewalk
- Samplitude
- Pro Tools
- Digital Performer
Still using, runs fine on Debian / Wine :
- Sequoia
- Emagic Logic Audio 5
- FL Studio
- Studio One
@tourte @mosgaard Atari Mega 4 with Cubase 2 was my first entry into Music, still used it up until 2008 somewhere for the best Midi clock ever built. Also shout outs to Reason and Logic Pro (my old-faithful, started at Express 7 and upgraded and used it until i switched fulltime to Bitwig/Linux about 2-ish years ago)
@theonlywaveforms what was your reason to switch to Linux back then?
@mosgaard @tourte I have already been using Linux since 2004ish for my main systems and always had a strong preference for an open source OS, but in the studio it never really had the ecosystem and stability to support it. #Pipewire and #Bitwig was the combination I needed to find something that could not just keep up with macOS+Logic, but outdo it with functionality and consistency.
@tourte great list! Can you work using the apps through Debian / Wine, or does it give you any limitations?
@mosgaard No limitations on my LMDE workstations. A minimum of 16 or 32 GB of RAM is required. On the ZorinOS distro, Wine is already preconfigured, you just need to install software like on Windows.
@tourte that sounds great! I’m using a lot of Windows plugins, but in my Native Linux daw, since I had a hard time getting a decent latency in the Windows DAW.
Zorin is great for this stuff! I use CachyOS for performance.
@mosgaard for me it went:
- Audacity
- Logic Pro
- Audition (in an undergrad music tech course, just for a bit)
- Max/MSP
- Pure Data
- REAPER
All of these except for Audition I still use regularly
@reillypascal what a diverse list! Do you only use Max/MSP stand alone?
I actually still use Audacity to rename meta-data in Wav files sometimes :)
@mosgaard since M4L only works in Ableton, I use it stand-alone. I do have RNBO, so I'll play with that, and I sometimes use Plugdata, which lets you use Pd as a plugin
@reillypascal sounds great! I haven't used Max myself, but I have friends who have been using it alot.
I meet a audio technician recently, who thought it was easier to track in Max than using a DAW :D
@mosgaard This is fun!
- Reason 1.0
- Digital Performer
- Emagic Logic Gold
- Pro Tools
- Various 24 track and 16 track tape machines from Ampex, Studer, MCI, & Otari
I’ve never stopped using Reason or Pro Tools and I don’t bother trying to talk clients out of recording to tape: if they’re serious about it, I’m a solid choice and I’m rarely the cause of sessions taking longer than the artist has budgeted).
@fadersolo It have to be joy working a place, where the tape machines are kept running like that.
Is Pro Tools the usual digital recording solution at your place?
@mosgaard Yeah, all the large format studios I’ve encountered in both northern and Southern California are always built around Pro Tools. Many have HDX cards, like my spot, which really levels Pro Tools up a notch.
@mosgaard
- My father's Akai DS4000 1/4" to record fake radio shows with my brother as a kid
- a 4 track mixer for video into stereo K7 deck to record my school grunge rock trio as a teenager
- a Fostex D108 digital 8 track DTD + Yamaha 01v mixer (Atari 1024ST + cubase to learn midi + Roland MC500 sequencer)
- Apple Mac G3 + Digital Performer and Motu 2408 audio interface
- Protools 5 / Otari Radar II / Protools 7-10
- Ableton Live for demo composing and recording
- Reaper (on Mac and Linux)
@NicolasBaillard love the fake radio shows idea! Reminds me I had this Ghettoblaster I recorded these extremely weird mixtapes on, where I would record 10-20 seconds of a song make small break and the record 10-20 seconds of a new song and so forth. To this day I’m still impressed at how random it all was, I wasn’t going for chorus or a fixed set of bars, I was just going for start/stop, timing would be totally non existent.
Perhaps the first sign of my later love for free jazz?
- Studio Session
- Music Mouse
- Max before it was Max/MSP
- Audacity
- PD
- Reaper
- Max/MSP
- Ableton Live
- Garage Band
(and lots of simple handmade software)
@ranjit nice list! What’s the most used today?
@musenhain uh! Atari, you don’t see a lot of that anymore.
Was that for recording or tracker/ish software?
@mosgaard Well, it was the first half of the 90s. 🙂
An Atari ST did the sequencing for my hardware synths (mainly a Korg Trinity and some 19"-synths I am not sure of which ones I owned at the time). The Falcon served as 8-track audio recording system: atari.soundpool.de/at_ie.htm (used for voice, guitar, field recording elements, already mixed down sequencer master track).
My music recording tech journey goes something like this:
Two cassette players wired together,
TASCAM portastudio 414
`snd` on Debian
Audacity? I think? on Debian
definitely Audacity on Mint
Reaper on Mint
TASCAM DR24 + Reaper
I still use the portastudio as an effects bus sometimes
Link to snd page appears to be dead. Wayback snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20251207101535/https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/snd/snd/snd.html
@jvw that’s a whole lot of Linux! Nice!
Was that Tascam cassette?
@mosgaard the journey started with recording emo songs using a conferencing mic and windows 98 sound recorder. upgraded to audacity shortly afterward. lots more between then and now!
@dried this was my first mic, as far as I remember: https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/pjwfhs/the_gateway_2000_pc_microphone/
Lot’s of mid frequencies and natural saturation 😂
@ Morten Mosgaard Pro Tools. Cubase/Nuendo. Reaper. Wavelab. Pure(Plug)data.
@jrp are you using Plugdata for stage-performances/theatre?
@mosgaard My journey?
Thorn 4218 reel-to-reel with sound-on-sound
Ampex mono reel-to-reels (3)
Tascam four track reel-to-reel
Revox stereo reel-to-reels (2)
Ampex four track and two track reel-to-reels
MCI four track and Revox stereo reel-to-reels
Tascam Portastudio 246
N-Track Windows software
Reaper on Windows
Boss BR-1600 hard drive recorders (2)
Reaper on MacOS
Reaper on Linux
@elsemusic you just need Reaper on FreeBSD and you have all the desktops :)
That’s an impressive list of hardware recorders. To be honest I also started on a cassette machine and later minidisc (line out from a mixer into the line in on the minidisc).
Audacity
Jazz++
Rosegarden
Ardour
@mosgaard I think it went :
Fl studio (cracked I'll admit)
Ableton
Cubase
Reaper
I did try Ardour and lmms at the same time as reaper but ended up choosing the latter
@mosgaard Here's my list:
- Csound
@matthewconroy that’s one impressive list!
None.
But I find it sad/problematic that Spotify is flooded with AI-music. In some cases an artist perhaps mainly use AI to “record” the song, but I am pretty sure an increasing amount of songs are now fully AI composed and generated.
Cool Edit Pro -> Pro Tools
Side quests in
Logic
Ableton Live
Tracktion
Digital Performer
Ardour
and more
@billyjoebowers wow, Cool Edit Pro! Totally forgot that one. I’m not completely sure where it would be in my list, somewhere around FL and the Ejays.
@mosgaard Something like FastTracker 2 -> Jeskola Buzz -> FL Studo -> (long break, nealy 10 yrs) -> hardware/DAW-less -> hybrid hw/eurorack + Tracktion Waveform + digital mix and FX.
@lagu totally forgot everything about Fasttracker! I actually think that was my first music software, but it was in an after school club I used it.
How is Tracktion?
@mosgaard Logic to Reaper. But still use logic for a few things.
