a guide to making music, on the cheap

over a few years, i've been occasionally asked over discord and wherever by new people that want to get into making music on some good free resources for doing so. this is my comprehensive guide on the best free shit on the internet.

just a disclaimer, of course there's always the option of sailing the seven seas for software, but for legalities sake i won't be covering that here. support small developers if you can!

small heads up, a lot of these free bundles can require accounts for seperate companies (eg. Native Instruments requires an account to download their launcher) so if you're insanely turned off by the idea of that, this might not be for you

🖥️ DAWs (digital audio workstations)

due to the huge scope of DAW software, the harsh truth is that it's difficult to get something featureful for free. there are some free DAWs out there, but generally they lack a lot of the features and polish of offerings from more established companies.

if you're looking for a good first option to spend money on, i'd recommend Cockos REAPER. a license only costs $60 and it's a really good DAW for the price. only issue is that there is a lack of pre-installed plugins

i made a full sheet comparing prices of every major DAW if you're intrigued to look for something yourself! https://wetdry.world/@mae/111759592599117109

Free

• Ardour
• LMMS

i've personally found LMMS to be a bit shakey (lack of ASIO audio due to licensing) and only really good for certain types of music (it comes with a lot of chiptune-y instruments!)

• GarageBand (macOS only)
• Audacity

as of writing Audacity is more of a simple audio editor, but the team seems to be working on overhauling it so it might become viable in future!

Trials

• Ableton Live (30 days)
• FL Studio (forever, but you can't reopen saved projects)
• REAPER (only shows a 10 second popup after the trial is up)
• Logic Pro (90 days, macOS only)

🎹 synthesizer plugins

• whatever comes with your DAW!
  • FL users: don't forget about Sytrus / Harmor / 3xOsc!
  • Ableton users: take a look at Operator / Wavetable / Drift
• Vital - awesome free wavetable synth functionally similar to the popular Xfer Serum
• Dexed - free synth plugin modeled after the iconic Yamaha DX7
• Surge - pretty comprehensive free and open source synth
• Magical8BitPlug - free plugin designed to make 8 bit gameboy-like sounds
• MeowSynth - just for fun :3

🎺 sound libraries

• Komplete Start - includes a generous helping of free instruments and effects from native instruments and the free Kontakt player needed for some other free libraries (requires account)
• Spitfire LABS - a ton of high quality free instruments from Spitfire Audio (requires account)

after you hear the labs soft piano you start spotting it everywhere

• Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover - the most well known free orchestrial library there is (requires account)
• Decent Sampler - sampler plugin that lets you playback Decent Sampler libraries which can be found on their website or on sites like pianobook
• Pianobook - lots of free instrument libaries for various other sampler plugins (Decent Sampler, Kontakt, Ableton Sampler)
• sforzando (or Fruity SoundFont Player) can playback SF2 files, which you can find on https://musical-artifacts.com. here's some cool ones:
  • EarthBound (now you too can harness the power of toby fox)
  • Microsoft GS Wavetable Synthesizer
  • SGM Soundfont
• FLEX in FL Studio has many good free sounds

🎛️ effect plugins

• whatever comes with your DAW!
  • never underestimate the power of stock plugins
• Kilohearts Essentials - a free bundle of basically any basic effect you could want (requires Kilohearts account)
• MFreeFXBundle - meldaproductions have a bunch of free effects that are solid

notably in here is MAutoPitch which is probably the best free auto-tune plugin and MFreeformPhase which is really cool for sound design

• Xfer OTT - notorious extreme compression effect, literally the audio equivilent of glue
• ValhallaSuperMassive - amazing free combination reverb/delay with many different algorithms, good for long reverbs
• TAL plugins
• TDR Kotelnikov - free compressor plugin

misc

• Freesound is a great website to find tons of samples and sounds effect licensed under various means (sometimes CC0) (requires account)
• Presetshare has lots of great presets for synth plugins
• BBC Sound Effects
• Looperman (requires account)

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at the end of the day, you don't need all of this to make good music, but sometimes it can be handy to have new sounds to play with, or a good set of effects to cover your bases

if you have any questions feel free to contact me 💜

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