The Best Free Music Software

[zircon]

Are you a Mac, PC, or Linux user? Do you have an internet connection? If you answered "yes" to these two questions then you can get some GREAT free music tools that can be used for remixing or anything else you want. I've written up a guide to such tools including my personal favorites and others suggested to me by fellow remixers and musicians from various forums.

http://soundtempest.net/the-best-free-music-software/

[Kanthos]

You seriously haven't posted that link here yet? I was sure you had. I give it out at least once a week on one of the keyboard forums I frequent.

[Kizyr]

Bookmarked.

I suppose zirc hasn't posted it here yet; it's the first I've seen the link. Thanks! KF

[analoq]

Some pedantry on the Mac side of things...

There are no Mac versions of:
- Kjaerhus classics
- Synth1
- GSnap
- Continuous Velocity Piano

GarageBand is not free. Yeah, it comes free when you buy a new Mac but you can't just go and download it. If you want upgrades you have to buy iLife which is $80.

Cacophony is not free. You're supposed to pay for it, at least. It's a $25 shareware product.

[zircon]

Whoops, good catch on those four plugins. Not sure why I had them listed as Mac-compatible (though if you have an AU->VST adapter, or are using Cubase, you should be OK, right?)

I think it's fair to say that GarageBand is effectively a free program. It has been coming with every new Mac for what, four years now? I think that MOST people reading the guide that are on a Mac would probably have one that was shipped within the last four years. But, I'll put in an addendum anyway just clarifying that. Likewise with Cacophony's shareware status.

[analoq]

You can use Cubase or a wrapper but the VST still has to be compiled for Mac. DLLs are Windows-specific files, OSX doesn't know what to do with them (it uses .vst)
All the plug-ins I mentioned were Windows VSTs (DLLs)

[zircon]

Ah, noted..

[Zerothemaster]

Some pedantry on the Mac side of things...

There are no Mac versions of:
- Kjaerhus classics
- Synth1
- GSnap
- Continuous Velocity Piano

GarageBand is not free. Yeah, it comes free when you buy a new Mac but you can't just go and download it. If you want upgrades you have to buy iLife which is $80.

Cacophony is not free. You're supposed to pay for it, at least. It's a $25 shareware product.

BTW, Garageband is ~$20 in the App Store, you don't have to buy the entire iLife set to get it.

Also, the link for Independence Free isn't linking to it. Needs fixing pl0x

[EtherEel]

I noticed you didn't have LMMS (Linux Multimedia Studio) on the list. It's for Windows and Linux (obviously). It's an okay sequencer. Not great, but it works.

http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

[hakstock]

I noticed you didn't have LMMS (Linux Multimedia Studio) on the list. It's for Windows and Linux (obviously). It's an okay sequencer. Not great, but it works.

http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

I've tried this on my linux pc. Managing around it should be no problem for FL or even Reaper users because of a similar interface (and vice versa, from LMMS to FL or reaper), but it's still rather buggy and doesn't recognize parameters from some VSTs (for example I couldn't get SimulAnalog's JCM9000 plugin to work, it would load the plugin okay but it didn't show any knobs/sliders/etc).

Since it works on windows, I'd recommend this to people who wanna learn the very basics of sequencing/mixing, and not be limited with time like FL or Reaper demos, but I hardly recommend it for serious work. Although I might do a small remix to showcase it's abilities if I find the time :P

[Neblix]

and not be limited with time like FL or Reaper demos

Neither FL's nor REAPER's demo are limited by time.

[hakstock]

Neither FL's nor REAPER's demo are limited by time.

They aren't? Been a while since I've had any of those so I don't really remember.

[YuriTajento]

That link won't work for me :(
When I click it, a white webpage opens with
Index of /the-best-free-music-software

at the top, and then there's a link to Impactsoundworks.com. That's all :(

[Metal Man]

Reaper is not limited on any point.

[Argle]

Reaper is not limited on any point.

Yes, the demo period is limited to 60 days.

[Metal Man]

Remains fully functionnal technically is what I meant.