Decent producing software?

[Futility Personified]

I think this might be the nth time i've asked this, or it might be the first. Who knows. I don't get along with the search function.

Can anyone recommend a decent bit of producing software, ideally with a drum machine kinda built in? I'm looking to extract samples from songs and make backings, hopefully with an idiot friendly UI.

I was using transmission before for the drums, which wasn't bad, but if there is anything better it'd be great to know.

[hexaune]

Reason is an amazing piece of kit and by mimicking real life audio equipment it makes the UI very user friendly ime. It makes it a lot easier to wrap your head around routing signals when you do it with ''real'' cables rather than drop down menus!

Its main drawback used to be that you could not record sound directly into it, however that has changed so it would fit your remit and its drum machine is a joy to use (you can even record samples directly into the drum machine).

It also used to get a fair bit of criticism for not supporting VSTs but iirc 3rd parties can now develop the equivalent of VSTs for it.


Personally I used a combination of reason, cubase and ableton, with ableton being my main tool these days but I started with reason and can't recommend it highly enough and it sounds like it is the sort of thing you are looking for.

[RedKobra]

Yup, Reason is awesome. I've used it for a long time. These days it handles audio as well which is brilliant. It means I don't have to mess around for hours with Reaper or Pro-Tools which I just find a real pain in the arse. Reason comes with plenty of drum patches and loops and there are tons more available on line.

Its very easy to use and there's a lot of Youtube tutorials out there as well.

[consuming negativity]

fruityloops

they call it "fl studio" now

there is a linux program based on it called "hydrogen" specifically that is a drum kit/made for drummers but it still needs a lot of work

[Futility Personified]

I think i'll try and get Reason going first, though after the Great Incident mk. 3 where I had to replace my hard drive I need to redownload all things for torrent usage.

Iirc I used fruityloops and couldn't get past the cracking stage. I have no idea why I said I was using transmission as a drum machine, pretty sure that was the download programme I was using at the time. Hydrogen is what I was using, it was reasonably functional but yeah, that needed a lot of work.

I sent you a PM about Reason and VSTs, Hexaune, but just for thread posterity / clarity:

Can I make a backing beat with drums on it that can then be extrapolated to another piece of software to create a full audio piece?

I don't really know what i'm doing tbh, but it's all part of the fun.