Greetings

[Alexinactive]

My best free DAW recommendations are Ardour, Cakewalk, and Reaper. They may not be "user friendly" as OS but they are very powerful and used in many professional recording studios. Highly recommended.

Also Krita is a good painting app

Thank you for your suggestions. I'd heard that Krita is actually better than GIMP for creating artwork, but I wasn't interested because I'd heard that Krita provides better support for drawing tablets, and I don't have one. I've just tried using Krita, and... it's already won me over. I'll definitely be using Krita for future artwork, but I'll probably still use GIMP sometimes. As for your digital audio workstation recommendations, I'll just use Online Sequencer for now; like how I eventually transitioned to using GIMP after using KolourPaint for some time, I think I'll eventually transition to using one of your suggestions after I've gained experience with musical composition.

There are tons of people around that could give you a hand with composition techniques, basics of music, etc. If you plan on using OS, I would highly recommend reading Lucent's Guide, it's got tons upon tons of tips and tricks to use.

Thank you for recommending the guide. Knowing some things before getting started with using software for the first time (or for the first time in several years: I'll definitely need to relearn how to use Blender if I ever want to make 3D artwork again) is always a good thing. I know the history (and therefore, the basics) of Western music, and I don't believe I'll need help learning musical composition techniques: just as I may unintentionally use anastrophe (a literary term I had to look up) in my writing, I could unintentionally use counterpoint (a musical term I remembered) in my musical composition.

If I do need help, I'll probably be able to find something on the internet – like the cheat sheet by Tone Deaf Comics here – but I very much appreciate the helpfulness of this community: I've tried using software better for making artwork (admittedly because I wanted to find flaws to argue why it's worse, but for making artwork, it really is better); I now know what software I should use if I want to make more professional musical compositions; and I'll be reading the guide after I've posted this reply.