Why not… blah blah blah? There are many DAW’s out there and if you as the teacher are more comfortable in teaching those to your students (and your students can afford it) then go with them.Why not Reaper… isn’t that also free? I’ll get into this more below.Why not Apple Logic Pro? I also love Logic and it is now amazingly cheap.Pro Tools is much better now that you don’t have to have AVID/Digidesign hardware to use it, but for the software it’s still too expensive in my opinion. I had 12 Pro Tools 001, 002 and Mbox systems at an old school (an investment of around $15,000 at the time) and all those systems a long time ago became obsolete. But it’s sooooo expensive!! No way most high schools can afford it. Why not Pro Tools… isn’t that industry standard? Yes it is.

Many teachers are fine with that so if you’re one of those go for it (I have students using both DAW’s) but in the interest of keeping things simple… it’s probably best to keep all students on the same software. So why not Garageband? Well… I love Garageband (it is actually better than Studio One Free in many ways), but it only works on Mac computers so if you have students in your class with Windows laptops it creates issues in that you’ll have some students on Studio One and some on Garageband.Some commons questions I get from teachers at workshops when I say this: If you want to see how quickly you can download, install and record with it I’ve made a quick overview video that you can see here:.It comes with good MIDI instruments so students can plug in a MIDI keyboard or other controller and get recording very quickly.Therefore teachers can be assured that all students are working on the same software so they don’t need to know how to use multiple pieces of software. it works the same on Mac and Windows computers. It’s free (for the basic version) – students can download it to their own laptops and home computers right away and get playing around with it.

Here is your answer… Studio One Free from Presonus. So… what DAW or recording/mixing software should schools use? There are so many options. The Control Room at Orange Studios in Christchurch, NZ. In the past it was too expensive for schools to have recording systems (after all, who can afford an SSL, Neve or API mixing desk?) but now with cheap microphones and interfaces made in China, combined with powerful (and relatively cheap) computers any high school music department can have a recording ‘studio’. With the dramatic increase in computing power combined with falling costs now anyone can have a fully fledged recording and mixing system on their computer (or iPad or iPhone!). Just so everyone is on the same page… a DAW (or Digital Audio Workstation) is the software on a computer that you use to record and mix audio and MIDI.

Daw for mac 2018