[y-c-o-m-b]

Ableton has like a 3 month trial and honestly the stuff it comes with out of the box is way more than enough to determine if you want to continue with such a hobby or if it's not something you'd be interested in long term. The tutorials are plenty and easy to follow as well.

I use Reaper as well, but it takes a while to get that "useable" for modern(ish) music production. The benefit is there's plenty of free virtual instruments/VSTs to download. All of them have downsides though as does reaper itself. In Ableton I can make an EDM track relatively fast given the out of the box presets - especially synth drums - but in Reaper using a free VST like HELM makes it kind of a pain to use. YMMV.

No matter what you choose, I do HIGHLY recommend downloading Spitfire LABS though - the free instrument packages are massive and highly customizable. It's truly amazing.

Here's some good VSTs for Reaper:

https://plugins4free.com/instruments/ (when the site works)

https://web.archive.org/web/20181203014924/http://sonic.supe...

https://guitarclan.com/best-free-vst-plugins/

EDIT: oh also trying to master a track in Reaper with free plugins is frankly pretty bad for a beginner vs Ableton's preset limiters and other utilities. The Cuckoos plugins are messy to deal with in my opinion.

[dist-epoch]

Ableton and Reaper are way too complicated for kids. I'd say they are 14+ software.

[somat]

Don't undersell kids. If they get interested in something they can learn it scary quick.

But having said that, sometimes the thing that grabs the interest is recording your voice in the windows built in recorder then playing it back backwards. Try audicity?