Paper Plane Pilot Blog

DAW Software Guide: A Digital Audio Workstation Round-up

June 10, 2009

With all the different DAW (short for Digital Audio Workstation) software packages out there, it’s hard to know where to start when thinking about recording music on a computer. While the technical aspects of computer recording are beyond the scope of this article, a quick presentation of the top software packages available should help you in choosing a DAW for your studio.

I’ve broken up the list below into a few sections: Mac-only, PC-only, cross-platform and misc. The misc. section contains DAWs that are used primarily as songwriting tools or that are less full-featured than their pro counterparts.

It’s also interesting to note that most DAWs hover roughly around the same price. You get their entry level offering (usually a limited version of the pro package) for a couple hundred dollars while the premium package is about $500-$1,000 or more.

Building my home recording studio one piece at a time

June 7, 2009

When people ask me about Paper Plane Pilot, one of their first questions is usually about the gear I use. And what better way to answer that question than to give a quick run through of my recording studio gear. Whether this encourages you to build your own music studio, or just serves to satisfy your curiosity, I hope you find the list below inspirational.

While many producers and engineers prefer either a pure software or hardware approach, I like to use both and don’t really favor any one method. Obviously, space and budget will determine most decisions here, but I find that good results can be achieved with either method and that, honestly, the engineer plays a much larger role in the final result than the gear does. That said, nice gear makes everything just that much easier once you get past learning how to use it all. Yes, that means reading the manual cover-to-cover for every single piece of gear you buy. It’s not the sexiest part of making music, but you’ll be better off for it.

Hi, I'm Dustin. I create electronic indie pop music. Click here to learn more.