Beginner’s Tutorial – Create Your First Song In A DAW

Now that you’ve got a basic understanding of how to use your DAW of choice it’s time to create your first song. If you’ve yet to read part 1 of our complete guide make sure you check it out before reading on. So, without further ado, let’s get started…

1. Whenever you open a DAW for the first time, you’ll probably need to create some tracks. Here, we’re simply going to add some instruments and an audio track in Logic.

2. We’ve created a synth, bass guitar, an audio track for drums, plus a piano track. You select the virtual instrument that will be played from Logic’s library to the left.

3. If you don’t have a separate music keyboard to play these instruments, you can use a DAW’s virtual keyboard, which enables you to play and record the plug-in instruments with your computer keyboard. Again, here is Logic’s version of it.

4. We’ve recorded across all three instrument tracks and loaded in a drum-loop sample at the bottom. The orange line at the top makes the DAW loop, so you can practise, then record. Record at a lower tempo to play notes slower if you’re not a confident player.

5. Now you can either start copying and pasting individual track sections as we’re doing here with the drum loop, or even copy everything within the looped orange area to quickly build up a song.

6. We’ve expanded the Arrangement view so you can see the song develop as the parts are copied, and now it’s time to mix the various parts with the virtual mixer now brought in, too.

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