@Ross_Haber
Ross,
there is no easy answer to your question because every DAW is easier for certain ways of working and harder for others. You need to ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish and how you want to go about it before you can find the easiest route.
playing 2 instruments the big question is what hardware do you already have and how do you use it? Do you have any microphones other than the budget condenser?I see you have a basic focusrite interface so you have mic pres, DI and midi for hardware. Do you own a piano? Acoustic or digital? Have a hardware synthesizer or keyboard with PCM sounds beyond basic piano or just the Novation Launchkey? Electric and/or acoustic guitar? If an electric, what kind of amp do you have or do you use a modeler like a POD?
For mainly electronic music I really like Fruity Loops. I have been with them since the late 90s when it was just a sample-based beat box and I had to export my loops to acid and create additional loops with my hardware or sync my hardware via MIDI to Fruity and record fruity's audio to a pair of tape machine or ADAT tracks along with the synth sequences I programed, then overdub any guitar or vocals on the tape machine. No joke.
Despite Fruity being more 'song oriented' now it is still not the easiest way to record long patches of audio and is much better for capturing live performances a few bars at a time. If you want to play a guitar take through the whole song you can, but its a pain compared to a DAW like Cubase, Logic, etc because of the implementation and the fact that editing has to be done via the Edison plugin. When I am doing electronic music with some live performance and MIDI channels controlling hardware synths that are going back into my recording interface a few bars at a time then I am all about it. If you're working this way then its the easiest and most intuitive software out there in my eyes. You have an option to work in beatbox format a bar at a time OR to use the piano roll and the mixer is like a very flexible SSL console routing-wise. Fruity comes with lots of good soft synths if you have a fully featured version and it can host pretty much ANYTHING you want to download.
If you are going to be making tunes with like a long, 3 minute guitar track and some softsynths and drum patterns and you use a Mac then I would say you should lookinto Logic OR if you are on PC try Cubase SX with Fruity Loops or Reason slaved via Rewire just for the old school drum machine interfaces they provide. Programming cool drum patterns is really easy in FL and Rebirth.
Stay away from ProTools if you are trying to do a lot of MIDI with hardware synths or Virtual Synths with your keyboard controller.
In short, you will need to figure out how you want to create your music and then pick a DAW that excels at your way of working and if your workflow changes then you may want to switch. They are ALL different in some ways and similar in others.... but generally the all-arounders are tricky to learn, but super-powerful ocne you are an expert while the pieces of software geared at a certain style are easy until you want to change the way you work and/or the type of music you create with them.
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