A DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation, is to building music what Final Cut Pro is to building video, or what Eclipse is to developing software. Most DAWs consist of multiple tracks which hold multiple audio clips, each of which are scheduled to play at a certain time. You build a song out of these clips, which you have loaded into the DAW. You can also add various effects to the clips and manipulate them. You can store abstract music event data ("play note A here at this time, then play note B Flat at this time") in additional tracks. This data has no sound associated with it, but like a piano player roll, you can set it up to play notes in some instrument, either an internal software instrument provided by the DAW or a third party, or emitted via MIDI to a remote hardware music synthesizer.
DAWs are used to produce the huge majority of music you hear in the media, from commercials to hip hop songs. Even seemingly real orchestral pieces for movies are often composed entirely using artificial instruments. For example, here is Junkie XL showing how he composed themes for Mad Max Fury Road.
DAWs are used to produce the huge majority of music you hear in the media, from commercials to hip hop songs. Even seemingly real orchestral pieces for movies are often composed entirely using artificial instruments. For example, here is Junkie XL showing how he composed themes for Mad Max Fury Road.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkNeXS0Lmxc