Audio mixing software

I want a program that I can mix up sounds, maybe create little beats. Im very new to this, and just want to play around. Is a free program like this unheard of? Any recommended programs? Im looking at Audacity right now, but im not sure if it would fulfill my needs.

Sorry if this is vague, but I just saw a video with a guy mixing things up. There were a bunch of bars on the screen, each bar represented a sound. The length of the bars were the lengths of the sound. It would play from left to right, and every time it hit a bar, it would play that noise until the bar ends. Sorry for the very dumbed down explanation, theres probably a very simple word for it, but I dont know it. Thanks

 

hmm...i'm not too sure if there are any free programs that can do this....i think last time i used Audacity it was just like a single track editor? i could be wrong since i haven't touched it in a while...but i kno what you mean, i use Adobe Audition at uni for sound editing and that is a multi track editor...

 

You were probably looking at either Garageband (which is available only for Macs) or Sony Acid Pro, available for PC. But that costs about $60 the last time I checked. As far as free alternatives, I'm not aware of any, and believe me I've looked for open source versions of these.

Now that I think about it, you may have also been looking at Adobe Premier, which also does what you're describing. Unfortunately there's no way to do this on the cheap either, as Premier is quite expensive. Good luck with the music stuff!

 

Reason 3.0, Sony Acid Pro, Sound Forge, Audacity, Cubase SX, Adobe Auditon they are just a few programs where you can load a section of your audio file and start doing some editing.

 

Garage band looks like exactly what I wanted, but unfortunately I don't have a mac. Im guessing theres no free programs that do the same thing as it?

This is the feature im looking for
http://www.treehouseconcerts.org/podcasts/garageband.jpg

 

nothing free from what i've seen...

 

An extremely good digital studio is FL Studio 6. It can be had from anywhere between $100-$350 depending on the version you get. The basic one is more than enough to just play around with, and will serve you well for a long time if you decide to get more serious. The higher dollar versions just have more options for customization of sounds and tweaking everything in the program.

 

Audacity is free. There's even a portable version:

Audacity Homepage

Audacity Portable

(Portable meaning you don't have to install it and you can run it off of external devices)

 

Well, I don't know. I know Acid is a pretty good cheap mixing software... but not too indepth.

We personally use-
Sonar 5 Producer Edition for initial recording and mixing
Acid 6.0 Pro when mixing in outside tracks
Sound Forge 8.0 for finalizing.

Sonar is pretty expensive, pricing around $600-$800, so I know that's not an option, I was just using our examples. I don't know... but go to Best Buy, and buy one of those Cakewalk Music Creaters. It's a good program, and for only around $50.

 

Audacity will do almost all of that except for create beats. For that, you'll probably need a pay-for program such as Fruity Loops 6. It's a great program. But Audacity is fantastic and free for a basic music mixing and editing program with the ability to add plug-ins for different effects and so forth.

 

I found this, which has a free lite version.

http://www.cockos.com/reaper/

Anyone else have experience with it? Does it have full functionality? Should it have come with a pool of sounds to play with, or do I download those somewhere else. I havent really gotten to understand the program at all, but playing with the demo tracks has shown me this is near what I want.