A few years ago, a music recording studio comprised lots of racks of electronics in order to allow musicians to create and edit tunes. Nowadays, you can do it all with just a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation. This is typically a keyboard (of the musical variety) which includes a built-in computer that lets you record and edit tracks. It also includes instruments, as ready-made samples, so your finished track can include piano, violin, organ, drums, and any other instrument which is either supplied with the DAW or which you've purchased separately.

Although a DAW is often a single device that incorporates both the keyboard and the editing capabilities, it's now becoming common to use a standard PC on which to run the DAW software. You can then create music either by entering notes on the on-screen keyboard, or connect a musical keyboard to the PC via a MIDI interface.

There are many types of DAW software available for Windows, though most of them are quite expensive. A welcome exception is LMMS, which is open-source and completely free. Not only can you enter and edit notes, and create multi-track tunes, there's also a nice variety of instrument samples included as standard. These include piano, strings, guitars and more.

LMMS (the first bit stands for Let's Make Music) is a 32 MB download. The program is malware-free according to VirusTotal and Web of Trust. It is, to be fair, not the prettiest of all the DAW software available, but it's still a great deal when compared with other similar products that cost hundreds of dollars.  Read More