Fender Studio Is A Free DAW For Mobile And Home Recording
One-tap recording, legendary effects, on all platforms!
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What’s this? A DAW from Fender?! And it’s free? With Fender Studio, the guitar heavyweight is entering the DAW world. Versions for Windows, macOS, Linux (!), iOS, and Android (!!) are available—now that’s how you get the attention of guitarists!
Everything You Need To Know
Fender Studio: A Stratocaster DAW?!
Recording isn’t exactly new territory for Fender. For example, the company recently entered the audio interface market with the Fender Link I/O. With its ultra-compact design, the interface was a bit reminiscent of IK Multimedia’s Axe series. Aimed at guitar fans, equipped with guitar software and a fast recording workflow – what’s not to like!
Fender Studio takes this a whole step further. Let’s start with a real announcement: the DAW is available to download for free! And not just for macOS and Windows, but also for Linux, as well as mobile versions for iOS and Android – and in 9 different languages! They’ve thought of practically every platform here, which is great!
„I’ve always said to the team, anyone should be able to just hit a single button on their phone and be able to start recording. We’ve built exactly that. We believe Fender Studio will enable more music creation than ever before by serving the needs of today’s creators and that will drive sustained growth for our company and our industry. I’m proud of what the team has created and can’t wait to hear what gets recorded in Fender Studio.” – Fender CEO Andy Mooney
What’s Included in the Free DAW?
To call yourself a digital audio workstation (DAW), you have to meet a few requirements. Recording, editing, mixing, exporting—from initial idea to finished song, this workflow must be mapped out in the software. Fender Studio has a lot to offer in this regard.
You get eight tracks – that’s not much compared to larger DAWs, but more than enough for demos. Also, both the desktop and mobile versions of the DAW offer “one-tap recording.” Just download the app, press the button, and start recording! It’s handy for quickly capturing ideas.
Fender Studio wouldn’t be Fender Studio without a whole range of emulations of famous Fender amps and legendary pedals. The download includes virtual versions of the ’65 Twin Reverb and Rumble 800 v3 amps, plus pedal effects (Overdrive, Sine Chorus, Mono Delay, Small Room Reverb, and Modern Bass OD). If you register an account with Fender, you’ll get even more:
- Amps: ’59 Bassman, Bassbreaker 15 Medium Gain, Super-Sonic, Redhead, Tube Preamp
- Pedals: VariFuzz, Vintage Tremolo, Stereo Tape Delay, Small Hall Reverb, Triangle Flanger, Simple Comp
Studio vs. Garageband
The main competitor to Fender Studio in the field of free DAWs is Apple’s GarageBand. The biggest drawback of GarageBand is, of course, its platform restrictions to macOS and iOS. This is where Fender Studio clearly has the edge.
However, GarageBand offers more flexibility with a maximum of 255 tracks. And, as you’ll have noticed by now, Fender Studio seems to forego MIDI in this first iteration completely. So, no drum programming, no virtual instruments such as Serum or Pigments. However, it makes sense that the first release is aimed primarily at the guitar crowd, who mainly record acoustic instruments. And it leaves plenty of room for improvement in future updates.
However, you won’t find Fender amps and high-end pedals in GarageBand. What else does Fender Studio offer for recording? A metronome, tuner, arranger track, time stretching (to adjust recordings to a different tempo), pitch shifting (for adjusting the pitch), and a range of effects for mixing (compression, EQ, reverb, and delay) and vocals (DeTuner, vocoder, ring modulator, and transformer).
The Ultimate Practice DAW?
And Studio offers more than GarageBand in one other respect. You can use the DAW not only to record and edit songs, but also to practice. Over time, Fender will offer a growing catalog of songs (ranging from pop ballads to rock numbers to metal tracks) that you can import into Fender Studio.
There, you can easily slow down the songs or change the pitch to make practicing easier. Individual instruments in the songs can also be muted. This allows you to play the guitar solo or bass line directly along with the track!
Where can you get the free DAW Fender Studio?
Fender Studio is available to download for free. Here are the links:
- Windows version (Minimum requirement: Windows 10 22H2)
- macOS and iOS version (Minimum requirement: macOS 12.4 or iOS 16)
- Linux-Vesion: ARM64 ir AMD64 (Minimum requirement: Ubuntu 24.04 LT with Flatpack support)
- Android version (Minimum requirement: Android 8)
If you still need an interface for recording, take a look at the Fender Link I/O. At Thomann*, it costs $79. As a release that appears to have emerged from the Presonus takeover, Fender is making a real statement with Studio. And it leaves enough room for growth to build up a large fan base here in the coming years!
More on the New DAW From Fender
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