Using garageband, and ready to move on.
 

Hello there. I just joined this forum in hopes of getting my music out there, and also getting tips from other experienced artists(Unlike me).

So I've been using garageband for a while to make my songs, and it's been a good and easy experience for me.

But for some reason, it's cutting of the ends of my tracks while uploading. I've found ways around that(Putting a long soundscape loop at the end), but it's still a real pain in the butt for me.

So I'm planning on getting a more adequate program late this summer, such as fl studio or Cubase, and I'm looking for suggestions from you on which the best.

Thanks!

i like Ableton the best.

FL studio's UI is really ****ty and cluttered imo and it stressed me out. Some people say that Ableton has a steeper learning curve.

Garageband is like... newb tier. It's pretty much a toy and no serious music artist uses it. When it comes to other DAWs, it's usually a matter of workflow.

FL studio seems to be heavily about loops and sequencing and stuff, whereas Ableton is more about arrangement and liveplay.

FL studio's UI is very freeform. Like you open something up and it appears on your screen and it's your job to organize them whereas with Ableton it's very rigid. Idk. I love Ableton. I think the UI for FL studio is needlessly sandboxy and the aesthetic of the UI is very cheesy to me.

It's way easier to get overwhelmed in FL and I think that is reflected in the tracks I hear from FL users. They are usually rather simple because the UI gets so cluttered so quickly and you have to spend lengths of time decluttering everything. FL is very like.. "do it yoru way" when it comes to the UI and I find that rather immature. Ableton is very rigid but it works and you can have 30 different clips playing at once and it's not overwhelming at all because everything is neat and organized. Honestly, a DAW should be arranging your UI for you so you don't have to waste time doing it.

Now, if you want that freedom of being able to arrange the layout and everything, pick FL. If you want a DAW that is extremely powerful and arranges everything for you into a very clean, easily understandable interface, pick Ableton. I haven't used the other DAWs enough but I've seen renoise and it looks stupid as ****.

For some reason Renoise's arrangement view is vertical instead of horizontal and that's just moronic to me.

It really doesn't matter in the end. You can achieve similar results with any of the DAWs. It's a matter of workflow and aesthetic, mostly.

It's all about how you use it. It's ironic because Ableton is apparently so popular because of it's cip based sequencer, but I literally NEVER use it when I'm producing music.. I'd definitely use it in a live setting, though.

Honestly -- it really doesn't matter. Just pick one.

What kind of music are you creating?

Hi there,
If you're still looking I would recommend Cubase, ProTools or Logic. All of those are excellent with features that far outstrip Garageband.

I've been fortunate to record in a number of top tier recording studios and with some excellent producers and they almost all use ProTools. Coming from Garageband though, you might prefer Logic as a lot of features are similar, even though it might be somewhat daunting at first.