Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).
At some point you might want to record some of the music you have been playing. Of course you can hold your phone next to your guitar and record, and at times you don't need more than that. But what if you want to do a bit more, actually record a full song, or multiple layers of instruments. That's when DAW's come into play.
What are some of your favorites? What are the ones that in specific cases do a thing really good, but in other scenarios not so much.
Ableton all the way for me! Integrates perfectly with my hardware synths, and actually the synths that come with it (the suite version) are some of my favorites and I use them in every project. I find the whole workflow to be very intuitive, with everything laid out in front of you rather than hidden behind endless pop-out windows like many other daws
Snap. I’ve used ProTools, Cubase, Audition, and Ardour a lot but Ableton’s Session view is such an amazing way to sketch out a song before bouncing over to Arrangement (akin to a traditional DAW’s sequence).
You can basically jam out a song in phrases, and build the sequence with a sample pad. It’s unreal how much faster it is to write music with Ableton - even with purely analogue audio inputs.
I could gush all day about session view it’s nuts! It’s like it takes the act of composition itself and transforms it into an instrument you can play