Music Production, Sound Design & Audio Mixing (Part 2)

 In my last post, I explained how sound waves play a part in sound designing and how understanding some of the properties (Amplitude and Frequency) help with producing music and designing sound. In this post I'll be making a basic explanation of what is used to produce music and each of its functions. Most music nowadays (especially Electronic Music) is produced mainly on the computer, through the use of a software called a Digital Audio Workstation (D.A.W.).

There are various DAWs on the market. An example: Steinberg Cubase - is widely used by professional musicians and music producers - e.g. Hans Zimmer

 A DAW basically allows you to edit, record and mix audio within a single program. It mainly consists of a mixing console, an audio sampler, a sequencer (which is where the digital audio files are sequenced), a piano roll and an audio converter. DAWs are also built to load software synthesizers and effects and are also designed to support MIDI, which is a format of stored instrument data. It doesn't make any sound on it's own and is simply used to trigger or modify sounds. Allowing a musician to create or play music using virtual instruments by using a MIDI keyboard or the piano roll view. Other types of widely used DAWs besides Cubase are Ableton Live, FL Studio, Pro Tools, Apple Logic and Propellerhead Reason, their basic functions are the same. But each one is designed to have a different workflow from one another. My preferred DAW is FL Studio, because of it's rather simple workflow. I'll demonstrate these features and their functions in my presentation.

 Anyway, That is all for this post. Thanks for reading!

- Dareil