The ability to record audio digitally, as opposed to on tape, revolutionised the music industry in the 1980s and 1990s. At first, it was used as sampling, the recording of short pieces of audio that could be arranged as effects or percussive tracks, or by speeding the audio up or slowing it down, you could change the pitch and create sample-based instruments. As hard drives became bigger, cheaper and faster it wasn’t long before you could record multiple tracks of audio digitally direct to a computer without any of the track limits imposed by the physical nature of tape.

There were many advantages over using tape not least of which were not having to deal with wow and flutter, mechanical failure, high costs and the fragility of reels of magnetic tape. But it also brought the ability to digitally copy and paste sound far easier and quicker than you could ever cut and splice tape. Digital editing allowed us to correct mistakes, to quickly gather the best takes and to start being creative in post-production rather than just in the moment of recording. The quality was also superb. When copying tape, there is always some loss of fidelity; with digital audio, every copy is exactly the same with no loss of quality.

That’s not to say that everything about digital audio is superior to tape. We’ve discovered that there’s something about the sound of tape that has a certain energy or vibe that digital audio lacks despite it’s pristine quality. In an effort to recapture the sound without having to return to the complexities and cost of using tape we have effects plugins that can warm up our digital audio and give us those same vibes. Analog emulation technology is so good these days that we have convincing digital versions of every old analog effects box, dynamics processor, console circuitry and synthesizer.

Sequencing has been around as long as electronic instruments have. The basic idea is that you program a series of notes, which are then played in sequence by a synthesizer. This used to be done through hardware circuit connections, proprietary interfaces or patch cables. However, in the 1980s, a bunch of synthesizer manufacturers got together to come up with a system that would allow digital communication between their instruments so that they could play each other, but more importantly, notes could be stored and played back from one sequencer to all synthesizers.

The system was called Musical Instrument Digital Interface or MIDI (pronounced like “middy”) and is a protocol that’s able to send not just notes but velocity, pitch bend, controller data on parameters such as filter cutoff and modulation. Anything you could play on a synthesizer could be sent and recorded as MIDI and then played back into the same or a different electronic instrument.

And that’s a really big point: with MIDI, you are not recording sound; you are recording information on what notes were played and which controls were moved. The important thing is that you can edit and completely change the information or the sound being used before it’s eventually recorded as audio for mixing.

Computers were the perfect platform for MIDI sequencing. They could visualise the notes and recorded data and let you rearrange them with the ease of a mouse stroke or keyboard shortcut. For many years MIDI sequencers and digital recorders were very separate. Sequencing didn’t require much computer power and so could run happily on home computers such as the Atari ST. Digital audio processing required a lot of computer grunt as well as expensive audio hardware to provide the physical connections to plug microphones and instruments into the machine.

By the mid-1990s, regular Windows and Apple computers were getting cheaper and more powerful, and MIDI sequencers found themselves running alongside digital recording software. It wasn’t long before software sequencer makers like Steinberg and Emagic started including rudimentary audio tracks and sound recording alongside MIDI tracks in their Cubase and Logic software.

In 1996, Steinberg came up with the solution that would make the DAW possible. It was called Virtual Studio Technology, or VST, and it brought in live software mixing, real-time audio processing, and effects “plugins” that made it work and feel like a traditional hardware recording studio. This led to virtual instruments, which brought the sound sources of MIDI sequencing (hardware synthesizers) into the computer, where they could be mixed and processed alongside digital audio tracks.

So, what is a DAW? It’s a combination of MIDI sequencing, audio recording, virtual instruments, effects plugins and mixing, all wrapped up in a powerful piece of software that gives you the tools to edit, write, compose, rework, mix and produce music to a professional standard.

Now that you know what a DAW is, how do you choose the right one for your music? The good news is that you can’t go far wrong. All DAWs can be a blank canvas for you to record sound and create sequences and arrangements. However, they do have different styles and ways of working, and some have tools that lean towards particular genres.

To help you go through all the options, head over to our article on the “Best DAW“. It highlights the best DAW, in our opinion, for all sorts of scenarios, such as recording bands, electronic music, scoring for film and the best overall.

DAWs can also vary in price from free to many hundreds of dollars. We have another article highlighting the best DAWs that you can download and use right now for free.

Hopefully, those articles will get you headed in the right direction.

Once you’ve decided on your DAW software, you may need some associated hardware that lets you plug in your music equipment and interact musically with the computer. All of it depends on your needs and your expectations. If you are running a DAW on an iPad or laptop, it will already have a microphone built-in and speakers or a way of listening on headphones. Touchscreens can be useful for entering notes and editing with ease. However, an iPad or phone mic is probably not going to be of the finest studio quality, and how are you going to plug your guitar in?

There are two key bits of hardware that are going to let you get the most out of your DAW: a MIDI controller keyboard and an audio interface.

A MIDI controller keyboard is a piano-like device that will plug into your computer via USB or a MIDI port and let you enter notes into the DAW. If you know how to play, then you can capture whole performances, or if you are a novice, then you can tap in notes in step-time or just see what happens as you press the keys. It’s usually more intuitive than entering notes with a mouse, and you can use it to trigger drums as well. Many MIDI controllers come with knobs, sliders and pads that let you trigger or control other things. They can make playing a virtual synthesizer feel like you are using hardware.

For a roundup of some of the best MIDI controllers head on over to our article.

An audio interface is usually a box that connects to your computer via USB and provides the physical connections needed by microphones, guitars, studio monitors, line sources and headphones. They can have preamps for setting the right levels, monitoring controls for your playback volume, level meters and other useful controls that make recording easier. They will also have high-quality analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, which means that your recordings will sound much better, and the playback will be top-notch.

There are some other advantages, too, like having multiple channels of inputs for recording bands and ensembles or providing a software mixer for setting up monitoring groups, DSP processing or internal recording. A good audio interface is also much more efficient in terms of computing power and will be fast enough to allow you to monitor audio and software instruments in real-time. All in all an audio interface is a huge upgrade over the sound engine of a computer and is vital in providing the full DAW experience.

They come in all shapes and sizes depending on what you need. Head over to our audio interface article for some recommendations.

A DAW is an entire studio on your computer, packed with extraordinary music-making tools. It can be as simple as lining up some loops, knocking out a tune or hitting record and playing your guitar. It can also be as deep as developing an arrangement for strings, creating sound effects for movies, editing dialogue, composing opera, or mastering records. Whether you have a computer or just a phone, everyone is invited to make music.