digital audio workstation
The software musicians use to record, arrange and mix a song, with every instrument on its own track.
A digital audio workstation, almost always shortened to DAW, is the software a song is actually made in. Think of it as a spreadsheet for sound: each instrument, vocal take or drum loop sits on its own row, called a track, running left to right in time. You record into it, drag things around, adjust the volume of each part, and add effects until the whole thing sounds like a record. Logic, Ableton Live, FL Studio and Pro Tools are the well known ones.
DAWs have a reputation for being intimidating, and it is deserved: the power is real, but so are the several hundred buttons. That is why AI companies keep trying to bolt a chat window onto one. Asking for “drier drums” in plain language and letting the software work out which knobs that means is a genuinely lower barrier than learning what the knobs do first.