I am new to this whole music thing. I can barely play a few songs on guitar and taking piano lessons now. However I have after COVID killed my business I am taking music production as probably a hobby in my early 50s.
With that all said I did the trial for Cubase Pro 10.5 financially it seems to be best bang for buck but affordability at this moment its not in the budget.
My question is will Elements be sufficient for me to use to learn all the stuff I have taken on including NI Komplete 13 EastWest Daw etc?
My draw to Cubase is the chord progession helpers it offers w/o wasting money.
Will Elements do the trick or should I just wait until I can afford the $360ish for Pro and use LE in the mean time? Too bad there isn’t an extended trial period like Ableton I just don’t like Ableton’s look.
No one can tell you apart from you. The good thing is, if you want to start small and upgrade later, it isv gonna cost you roughly the same, sometimes it even gets cheaper…
Elements will actually take you quite a long way. Most of the chord functions are included with the Elements version (C.Track, C.Assistant, C.Pads, C.Editing are all included). You can use that to learn, and then upgrade later on. As already said, it will not cost you more to do so. You can even get Pro cheaper if you wait until there’s an upgrade sale (usually in late summer).
Cubase 11 is expected in a month or so, so you could wait for that though and get the new features too.
Elements is probably the best version for anyone who hasn’t used Cubase yet. It’s enough to learn on and you can do amazing things.
If you decide to upgrade to studio or pro in a year, it won’t hurt you at all, as the program looks the same as always, it just grew a few new things here and there.
True a lot of the differences are in quantities - more Tracks, more Instruments, fewer limitations…
But the OP did say they can’t afford Pro right now.
I’d recommend waiting until Cubase 11 comes out, so you can get the new features. Also you can compare the versions and see if C11 changes the want/afford calculation - it likely won’t. Then when the upgrade sale happens you’ll have enough experience using Elements and exploring its limits to know if Pro is worth the upgrade costs (most likely yes) and you’ll have had time to save up for it.