Recs.
Updated
FL Studio (formerly Fruity Loops) is a DAW that focuses on being highly customizable. It is mostly known for its advanced piano roll and easy to use interface, and is used by many big EDM musicians. With quick and efficient transition between its Pattern and Arrangement(Playlist) modes, workflow can be boosted to great lengths.
The FL Studio DAW employs a simplistic interface that is designed to be easily navigable, such that almost all its functions are simply...laid out in the interface for the user to explore
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Intuitive piano roll
Piano roll is a FL Studio's instrument step sequencer. It is considered to be among the most intuitive and flexible tools for quickly creating patterns and manipulating all aspects of each note. A single left click inserts a note, while a right click deletes it. It's possible to mute notes, splice them, stretch them, add shuffle, etc quickly.
The Piano Roll caters for those new to Music Theory as well, containing an array of chords from which to choose, be it a Major, Minor, Minor 5th, Minor 9th, what have you.
Pro It's possible to run FL Studio on Linux via Wine without a noticeable performance impact
Version 12 of FL Studio includes a new Generic ASIO driver that's capable of achieving same low latency performance as the native Windows version. Instructions on how to set up the DAW to run on Linux via Wine can be found here.
Cons
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Pro Complete control over multiple Launchpad Pro animation lightshow projects
Live can, but working with more LPs is a pain.
Pro Unlimited creativity
With tools in the piano roll like the "Riff Machine", and the "Randomize" tool, you can literally let the computer automate the production if you want. In addition to plugins like "Gross Beat", Slicex, DirectWave, the ideas can be limitless.