DAW with Drums included?

[justheretolook]

Hey I'm doing a solo project and I'm using Audacity to record my tracks. But I need help in changing software. Because I want a drum machine included with the multi-track studio to make some electro beats while recording with guitars and bass. Any suggestions? And if possible, like Audacity, to have a button to change the wav file to mp3.

Sorry if this has been asked before. And yeah, I want free(I know I'm cheap)

an advanced thank you!

 

[dir]

Reaper is free (unexpiring shareware) and used by quite a lot of people. The learning curve from using something like Audacity to this is a little more steep though, so don't get intimidated by it and try spend some time reading the manual and getting to know how to use it.

 

[echoist]

Hi!

I'm assuming you are in Wins platform.
If you are, then check-out TrakAx: http://www.trakax.com/ It was recommended by a reader and editors of Computer Music mag. Its suppose to be the Windows version of Mac's Garageband, though with "much, much less" drum loops. But you can easily get FREE loops from the www. With the loops, you can easily cut/paste/edit to get the sounds you want for your songs. Personally, i've not tried it, so i can't comment much! Ohh, and its FREE!

If you're on a Mac, Garageband is the best bet for straightforward, simple, recording. Very easy to use with great/decent results. It comes FREE with "only newly purchased Macs". Many people feel its just "a toy software", but i've heard great stuff created in Garageband. So far, i'm happy playing with it...

Reaper is another good software - available for both Wins and Mac (Beta only for OSX)
Its "nearly FREE". You have to buy the license (US$50) after trying/evaluating it for 30days. But it will still work fully even if you don't pay for the license. But its not as easy to work with (like dir mentioned). I've tried it on my Mac, but found the layout non-intuitive. I'm just lazy... Also i'm guessing the support is pretty good, and they've updated the versions "very, very regularly". It was ver2.51 just barely 2 months back. Now its ver2.53!

Anw, if you want to try it, download here: http://www.reaper.fm/
There's videos lessons available even! http://www.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/ReaperTutorials

Good luck with your recording(s)! Let us know how it turns out...
And don't forget to share your music with us here! :mrgreen:

 

[gutturalpiss]

Just buy REAPER - it's a lot less money for what you're getting. If you go for the commercial license, it is still value-for-money. It is NOT free at all. The "free download" is just that - a free download to "try" the software. When you try something, you want to try it out in its entirety - and Cockos delivers on that.

Contrary to popular belief, it's one DAW which beats other professional ones in terms of UI and design. For every software there is a learning curve; don't judge something by how easy/difficult it is to adapt especially when you don't know what fruit it can bear.

It is backed by a very helpful community. Unlike other proprietary software, Cockos takes user input and feedback very seriously. This can also be seen from energyXT2 and Renoise. If you have a request for a certain feature, a bug report, comments, they will listen. Most of the time, your request will be implemented if it makes sense

On my Linux DAW this is the only host/software (excluding plug-ins) which I paid for (extra license; one is running on Windows). It is that worth the dough.

Anyway I think you need to know how to get your drums to "come out"? VSTi is what you want. Or rather, an instrument plug-in is all you need. A drum program is simply a sampler + sequencer == instrument plug-in. As long as you have velocity and layer (multiple samples; wav/flac/ogg format files) functions, you're good to go. Lots of free VSTi drums are available at www.kvraudio.com but I would recommend Addictive Drums for a standalone commercial drum machine. For samples, kits that come to mind are Colombo Acoustic and Chimaira, both freely available subjected to their distribution licenses.