you're not ignorant mate, you just don't know...yet, but everyone started at some point.
Hope you, well "don't know" but at least have a notion
what you're letting yourself in for, addictive and at times testing your self-confidence.
And if you're in a relationship sharing a roof with someone be prepared to dish out for flowers and other bribes to make up for those days and nights when you answer the call for lunch/dinner/come-to-bed with "just gotta finish the compression on this track"..
Do you have a PC or Mac (didn't come through) or do you make that dependent on the software you will go for?
Will you be working with recorded material (instruments, voices) or more sample based?
Not that it really matters because all apps will handle both paths but if you go for the latter
take good old Fruity Loops into consideration as it will give you results fairly quickly, haven't worked with that for ages though but always liked the ease of flow.
Personally I use PC and have Sonar 7 and Live 7 installed.
I can't really say which is best as with so many things it's preference and what suits your work flow.
Live has a sort of shallow learning curve, compared to others that is - still challenging though, but there's tons of tutorials to be found on the tube etc.(as for most audio apps)
Sonar I'd say is like so many others (Steinberg's Cubase, Sony Sound Forge to name a few) complex and steep but well worth learning, also a process that will never really end as you'll always discover stuff, tricks and work-arounds and even silly mistakes can open up different paths (had some tracks running kinda shifted, off-tempo, by mistake and sounded quite cool tbh).
I also should mention Reason, but to me it's too self-contained, comes with a lot of good stuff though (Thor synth rocks!) but it won't accept audio files (uses .rex format) which you can still work around with ReWire but too much hassle for me and some say Reason has a very distinctive sound that can be spotted from a mile away. I never got that far with this software but maybe some fellow AHer can give some input.
The reason i was asking if you're willing to spend money was purely that i tried to advise peeps before only to have as last post "can you send me a torrent link and a crack for XYZ", which I do understand given the price of software but not condone, the developers need to get payed to keep going, simple as that (same as with tunes btw).
You could try demos and lite versions to get familiar with apps and their graphic interfaces, no point in telling you waht's "best" and you hate just the looks of some already, dreading to work with and in it.
Also try the free KRISTAL to get a feel for structure
KRISTAL Audio Engine
and head over to KVR for plug-ins and virtual instruments (VSTs or AudioUnits if you're on a Mac)
KVR: Virtual Instruments, Virtual Effects, VST Plugins, Audio Units (AU), DirectX (DX), Universal Binary Compatibility - Audio Plugin News, Reviews and Community
most important, play around and don't put yourself under too much pressure, give yourself time, there will be days when you're highly motivated and nothing goes and days where you just "play" and things fall into place all of a sudden.
Good luck buddy.
Linear Mode
