different well-known music softwares/apps and my opinions plus recs based on what you wanna do

[Yanderemenhera]

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1. I have never made music in my entire life and I just want to play around with music, nothing too hard or serious.

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chrome music lab

chrome music lab is free to use, just googling it should pull it up and it might actually be able to run on a switch, the UI is extremely easy to understand and you just drag and drop colorful blocks and make a cute harmony. it is basically impossible to make something sound bad, even if you tried and there's just a few instruments on there so you don't get confused or overwhelmed. can you make a full-blown song on there? eh, not really but if you're bored one day and not very serious about actually making something then this is great for you!

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I want to make simple little songs, or I'm more experienced with making music and I want to make chipnote, 8 bit,or just generally retro sounding music but i'm broke

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beepbox and its various mods

beep box is a free website you can use to make simple little songs if you wanna make something more in-depth than what chrome music lab has to offer, however depending on the settings you use it can be a bit more complex and basically like a compressed and simplified music software you might see a "professional" use so to speak. you can edit the sounds of instruments, change the type of board you use to put the notes on like expert for example is a lot more complex and has more areas to put notes than easy does, and so on. so I could understand someone who has a bit more understanding of music but is too broke to buy all kinds of old synths using that in conjunction with another music software or on their own to make genuinely amazing chipnote music and even covers of other songs. but it's also simple enough to use by someone who has a bit of an understanding of music but not a lot and they just wanna make simple tracks.

I understand things like what chords sound happy, scary, sad, ect and what A minor vs C major sound like and things like that, but I want to make more complex music in a variety of genres but i'm broke.

sound trap and band lab

if this image makes sense to you, then you're probably already familiar with music making enough to use either of what I just mentioned. first, I'll discuss sound trap; sound trap is both an app and a website that allows you to make music for free-

HOWEVER

it has content locked behind a subscription service, but there's plenty of content for free for you to use and make an actual song with in various different genres. you can edit the sounds of your instruments a lot more than you can with beep box for example and there's a lot more range of sounds and stuff you can get with it. you can ether use your keyboard on your laptop to play notes (i'd only recommend this with piano synths) or you can add notes to the midi board like sound trap. the UI is simplified in comparison to cubasis (we'll get to cubasis after this segment) but it's still a lot more complex than beep box and you can make good music on there regardless of the UI not being as intense as something you pay for.

second part to this segment is on band lab, band lab is a lot like sound trap in the way you can edit the sounds of instruments and things are locked behind a pay wall and you can make genuinely professional sounding music in any genre on there. however the main differences lies in that it's a downloadable app and instrument selection and UI, the UI for band lab feels a tad bit simpler than sound trap but not in a bad way. so it's basically a pick your poison sort of deal, i'd use both for different instruments and download the file and export it and just add it to the other software.

final note on bandlab, bandlab has a shorts/reels feature not unlike YouTube or Instagram. I personally find it hella annoying so if you don't wanna open your app to some SoundCloud rapper's video than just use soundtrap

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I ether have money or I can work quickly and I wanna use a more professional software that's very complex and I know what i'm doing so the complex UI isn't an issue.

cubasis

cubasis has a free trial of about 30 minutes, you can buy the app outright if you have money. it's very complex and the UI looks very futuristic. if you can work with 30 minutes or you have the money and you obviously know what you're doing and it's not like, above your paygrade so to speak, then i'd recommend it for you. I just don't really have much to say about it to be honest because it's just so perfect I suppose and I think everyone's already heard of it and knows of it capabilities since it's so popular.

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closing thoughts and explanation of what I mean by "professional"

basically, I'm not talking about someone like behtoven or mozzart but someone who makes music and makes money from it on YouTube and Spotify and obviously other music platforms as well, this doesn't count people like Taylor swift for example because from what I understand they usually don't use things like this. the type of people i'm reffuring to by professional is someone who makes their music on virtual synths and such and they make money from their music, a good example would be your average vocaloid producer basically. in the future i'll likely do a topic on vocaloid alternatives along with one explaining how to make different emotions into music through midi patterns like ominous vs happy but this was just a simple thing to write, took about an hour since i'm a fatty chud and I hope it's useful to someone at least.
I am still working on that do my beat twin stuff btw, don't you worry about that a long with music for someone else.

[Luana.vasper]

I actually love you for this because I wanna record and make my own music so bad. Big upvote from me

[Yanderemenhera]

@Luana.vasper I'm glad you like it

[macncheese.]

Omg i js want to give u a big, long hug rn tysm