Children are young and can learn fast.
Give them Renoise.

When i was a child i could use the keyboard to copy and edit something in DOS faster than later with a mouse.

When you have laid out something in your head you are faster using 10 fingers than with a hand and 1 finger.
Besides that, children hands are growing and need to move. Don't constrain them to a mouse and Renoise has so many keyboard shortcuts that it's the Host with the least amount of having to use a mouse.
Renoise is not pricey and what was good enough for us Amiga,C64,MSX,... is good enough for current children.

I own FL Studio, Studio One, Live, Cubase, Logic and Renoise and would give my daughter Renoise when she gets interested in Sound Production.
Last edited by Bathrobe on Thu Jan 24, 2013 3:56 am; edited 1 time in total

Depends, but it's sure a lot more fun.
I'd say instruments for kids with the age from 2-150 and computers from 7-8 years up on.

MULAB looks fairly straightforward, and would introduce them to linear MIDI style editing which would be a natural step to 'bigger' things like cubase etc, so more useful in the real world.

Reaper might be better for pure audio (band) recording though.

For pattern based/electronic i'd say Orion. Even though im an FL user I think Orion is probably more straighforward.

I was just emphasizing the obvious, that "best" almost always translates to "What I prefer without any regard for any other circumstances or conditions".

Frankly, the best music production software for "a kid" (a rather wide description) is the one he or she actually - likes - making music in... and only he or she can make that determination. Take the kid to Best Buy, grab something on the shelf, Samplitude Music Studio, whatever, see what takes.

http://pro.magix.com/en/samplitude/miditech-english.730.html

Tracktion 4 will be released within 48 hours or so , nuff said !!!

Reaper or FL Studio because I think they are the DAWs of the future. Low cost, insanely popular, and very functional. I am not a big fan of FL Studio personally but I can totally see the future going through imageline.

Agreed! I got a copy for my nephew, and within 20 minutes of sitting down with him, he'd made a pretty passable dance track!

I'll also throw Garageband in there too, it's a good stepping stone to Logic or Protools, and has both midi and audio loops to get those concepts across, with a nice set of virtual instruments and effects too.

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

+1

LMMS is pretty easy to understand. It's sort of a stripped down version of FL Studio, mostly the same workflow. You would have to live with a couple of bugs though i guess. But it is free.

A modest hardware setup would make for a good learning environment, I think. A little mackie mixer, couple of mics, multi-fx box, and a not too elaborate synth/sampler piped into an old pc running something like audacity as a recorder. I say hardware because putting your hands on things is fun and it reinforces learning. Six months to a year or so running something like that, and a kid could probably better relate to and appreciate any full blown daw, without getting stuck into a branded mentality...brand b daw is better because I started with it, or brand a is better because it does something this way.

If you do start the kid out on a daw, I would suggest something very modest and generic - if you're familiar with Reaper, use the customization features to whittle it down with simplicity and clarity in mind...heavily edit the menus, ditch the js stuff, and add only essential plugins, making sure that you choose plugins that are stable and have generic parameters.

Given that it took me 3 weeks to figure out Logic Audio, and 2 hours to figure out tracktion initially, I'd say tracktion.
However I favour hands-on stuff, so an old 4-track would be what I would use. Then they can see music as something physical, not something that purely comes out of a digital environment. There'll be plenty of time for that stuff later on, given the gradual rise towards complete digitisation of everything.

DISCLAIMER: written after a several drinks, a fight with gf, and on an iPhone . :/

Reaper? Renoise? Im assuming you folks don't have kids.. ha!

I said FL studio earlier in the thread, if they're on the older side (read longer attention span) Ableton could work nicely.

Thing is, with fl studio, you're going to be like <click click click>.. "hey look! I just made a beat!!" .. Boom, you've got their attention, and after a couple of weeks you can be like "hey check out this crazy sound I can made!!" (you just put some delay on the beat), kid will be like... "woa!! how did u do that!!".. that means you've got their attention for a while. As a teacher, I can say that the best method is to trick them into wanting to learn... not telling them "you need to learn this if you want to make music." Fl studio is good because YOU can get some results quick enough to get them to think: "hey that wasn't so hard.. maybe I could do that!"

With other daws you're going to have to start out.. "So.. there's two kinds of tracks.. audio and midi...."

child interrupts, "what's a track!?"

you think to yourself.. "Jesus that's a good question" and finally mutter: "don't worry about that, you'll understand later"..

child interrupts again: "what's midi!?

etc.


again, you just want to be like... "hey look at this cool beat I made in 45 second"

I don't think it matters, but it does make a big difference in terms of how you approach it. A friend of mine has a kid that's about a year old and really, really loves picking up two sticks and banging around on the drum kit. He's got a basic sense of rhythm but I think it's just the minimum effort -> loud noise reward that he really enjoys most (as with most kids, and as stillshaded so rightly points out, this is what you need to get right). An older kid can go a bit longer without an instant reward and can understand when you explain more abstract concepts. The older ones will also have higher aspirations (want to sound like Skrillex) than young kids (want to be loud).

Just remember that essentially it's about them having fun, the learning should happen as a nice side effect. If kids feel something is work, a lot will be turned off quickly. I started playing instruments about age 5, but got turned off by piano lessons a few years later because it wasn't fun.




Unless you're doing 1 on 1 tuition, I'd avoid this completely. When we had music at an early age in school, it was primarily percussion (tambourine, cowbell, bongos, guiro etc.) and singing. As I said before, anyone can get a rhythm going, but melodies are a lot harder - and you're not just learning the basics of melody, but also playing technique etc. etc. It's much, much harder to get the quick result with instant reward. If anything, use the keyboard, not the guitar, the keyboard is a lot easier to learn. But I'd start with the beat - something you get running in 20 seconds for instant reward, and not worry about the melody until at least the second lesson.

Programming in a melody also saves having to learn the instrument (which takes years) while getting instant results; it also levels the playing field a bit between those kids that can already play an instrument and those that can't.

I think you can't go wrong with Studio One free, it is awesome, never expires and you have everything to make music.

http://studioone.presonus.com/free/

Intended for beginners who don't yet need the advanced features in Studio One™ Artist, Producer, and Professional, Studio One Free provides all of the recording and editing features needed for basic music production—and as its name implies, it's free.

To use Studio One Free, download the Studio One installer by clicking on the link for your operating system below, install, and then click on Run the Free Version when the activation dialog comes up. You can then immediately use Studio One Free, no Internet connection or user account is required, no product key is involved, and Studio One Free will not time out.

It is also possible to start the 30-day Studio One Professional demo at any point and then return to running Studio One Free once the demo expires.


Features

Studio One Free includes the following features (See chart to compare versions):

Elegant single-window work environment
Powerful drag-and-drop functionality
Unlimited Audio and Instrument (MIDI) tracks
Unlimited FX channels
Two simultaneous inputs and outputs
Unlimited inserts and sends per channel
Single and multitrack comping
Multitrack MIDI editing
Track list with presets and mixing-console link
Track Transform (advanced freezing capability)
Content browser with search, user tabs, and preview player
Automatic delay compensation
Easy-to-use sidechain routing
Presence virtual instrument with 100+ presets
Most intuitive MIDI-mapping system available
Real-time audio timestretching and resampling
Compatible with any ASIO-, Windows Audio-, or Core Audio-compliant audio interface
Works with key commands from Pro Tools, Cubase, and Logic—or create your own key commands
8 Native Effects audio-processing plug-ins:
Beat Delay - Tempo-Synchronized Delay
Channel Strip - Dynamics Processing and Equalizer
Chorus - Mono/Stereo Chorus
Flanger - Stereo/Mono Flanger
MixVerb - Mono/Stereo Reverb
Phaser - Stereo/Mono Phaser
Red Light Distortion - Distortion Processor
Tuner - Instrument Tuner