Hey Andrew,
I am not a professional producer or something like that, I am on the beginning of my music making process as well. But maybe I am able to help you a little bit, anyway...
So for a quite nice free DAW you can have a look on Audacitiy (https://www.audacityteam.org/). It's the best FREE DAW I know. But I am not shure if there is a possibility to record MIDI tracks. I think this is for audiotracks only. But maybe you find something out about this.
Another opportunity for you would be testing a free version of some professional DAW, like Ableton live lite or something.
But this all depends on which way you want to go with your Orba. Think this gadget is great for live recordings. But often electronic music production is more like a statical development process....you record some simple things with a MIDI Keyboard or even your mouse and edit this to an even more complex sound step by step. For this approach may the Orba is not the best device to start with. But for the very first beginning of making musik, I can recomment to use your orba audio output and record internal preset sounds directly with e.g. Audacity (all layers separate, not using the internal looper with all 4 layers). Play around and have fun to jam!
Maybe you heared something about VST-Plugins. This is what you need to edit your sounds inside your DAW.
Hope this helps you a little bit.
Best,
Robert
Maybe there is another thing to mention...in any case it is very useful to have a quality soundcard (Interface) to start with making music. Most manufacturer (e.g. M-Audio, Focusrite, etc.) offer you a lot of software which is very helpful to start. Sometimes there is even a simple but useful DAW (mostly lite versions of the big DAWs like Ableton or ProTools) on top. So you don't have to pay money for this to get started.
Andrew Arild
Are there any Orba owners out there that are experienced digital music artists or producers that can contribute to helping newbies get started?
I am new to digital music, just learned what MIDI actually means and I know I would benefit from being able to ask questions of experienced experts as I grow through the learning curve.
Some sample questions...
I want to use my Windows 10 PC to build tracks from the output of Orba. Any recommendations as to what DAW's are best choices? Easy to learn? Not cost $400 or $50/month to get started?
Is Orba enough on it's own to get started learning with a DAW or is this the start of a trip down acquiring new hardware road?
What resources do you recommend reading/viewing to get through the early part of the learning curve and being able to actually create?
This topic may go nowhere or, a bunch of newbies might end up helping each other out. Either way, I love my Orba.
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