Free Music Creation Programs?

[faerimagic]

Say you want to create an original song, or create a karaoke track that isn't available?

What software would you use to create it?

I know that some producers use FL Studio and the demo is free and doesn't expire, but in my opinion, it's actually pretty difficult to navigate without the help of in depth tutorials.

There's another program called Musescore that's a bit easier to use, but lacks many song effects (though, you could just edit it with Audacity).

Do any of you guys know any other alternatives?

 

[Hentai]

There is Reaper of course.

It has an unlimited free trial and if you want to support them you can get the 'discounted' licence for as low as $60, and it will remove the nag at program startup once your trial runs out. That being said you can use it in trial mode as much and as long as you want without penalty.

The full 'commercial' licence only really applies if you are making +$20,000 per year from using the program otherwise the 'discount' licence should be all you need as there is not functional differences between the two outside of application & licencing.

 

[irei1as]

Music Studio Producer and Anvil Studio are a pair of freeware used to make midi files.

But they're quite not easy to use.

 

[shinami]

Anvil Studio is horrendous. It's incredibly difficult to use, sometimes won't save corectly, and overall a huge pain in the butt. I've lost so many MIDI projects I'd worked on for hours on it because it would be a wierdo in terms of saving. It's much easier to either get a different MIDI maker or just learn note patterns and size relative to tempo in UTAU.

...Sorry, just saw the mention of Anvil Studio and wanted to throw my two cents in. I have little else to offer to this thread.

 

[PandaLolii]

There's DOMINO which is a Japanese program . . . it's more for MIDI's so I guess this isn't what you were looking for? It's more for straightforward composition of karaokes rather than all the effects too...;AA ; Oh this was no help.

 

[mewberry101]

Try Microsoft Songsmith~ Academic Edition. It's awesome because is automiatically generates music for any type of vocals, and you can even change settings with the background music like 'lively mode' and you can choose between all sorts of song genres. The reason why i recommend the Acadameic Edition is because it's free. I'm sure there are some youtube tuts on how to dl it, but anyways, I hope my advice helps ^^

 

[Pianodream]

I use Melody Assistant in general. The free version won't expire, but it becomes quite nasty because after you enter 50+ notes (I think) you can still add notes but each time you get a "buy me!" message.

 

[irei1as]

Anvil Studio is horrendous. [...]

I totally agree! I was very happy to drop Anvil Studio for Music Studio Producer (still not the easiest to use).
But, well, it seems MSP doesn't work in some computers and there is a last version of Anvil done for the last Windows.


As other freeware option to make midi you can use wavetone from Ackie Sound. But, again, it's really not very easy to use and its working is more specialized toward doing copies of karaokes more than doing anything from zero.

 

[scarfu]

To be frank I don't think there's a lot of "free" options if you're talking about creating legitimate music. While there's a lot of free midi programs, you won't be able to use real vsts and vstis and get real instrument sounds from them, only the cellphone-y cheap instrument sound that computers give off with... well, midis.

I pretty much suggest it for just about everything music-related in UTAU, but Mixcraft is my program of choice. You need to buy it, but it's much cheaper than other big name programs such as FL. I've made all of my originals in it, as well as mixed all of my covers and even recorded my voicebanks in it, so it's very very versatile.

The thing is though, unless you actually have experience and confidence in music and you think you'll actually be able to make songs, I don't think you should physically buy the program right away. Mixcraft's free trial is kind in the sense that while you won't be able to mix anything down to mp3 or wav after the free trial is over, you can still use the program to it's fullest and save your Mixcraft files, so if you ever feel confident that buying the full program will be a good investment for you, you can do that and still have the music you've already made.

The program you use I guess all comes down to how serious you are about making music (i.e. are you doing it solely for UTAU, or do you have a legitimate interest in making music for UTAU and outside of it too?) and what genre of music you plan on working with.

 

[irei1as]

Actually, I know REAPER and Music Studio Producer can use VSTi.
REAPER is quite better as it can use VSTEffects, too, and its functionally is higher.

Of course, the free VST you can google around aren't that good as the pay VST that great musical programs for pay include.

 

[faerimagic]

Woah, so many replies, thanks guys!

@shinami I hated Anvil Studio. It was hard to use, and even harder to uninstall. I had to download a separate uninstaller to uninstall it.
@scarfu Probably just for UTAUs right now, and see how that goes. I really don't know what's going to happen, but I'd like to attempt turning some of my lyrics into actual music. Mixcraft, huh? I'll keep that in mind.

I'll probably download some of these and try some of them out! Thanks for helping!

 

[icecheetah]

LMMS http://lmms.sourceforge.net/ is a pretty decent free VST and VSTi host. And it isn't really beepy unless you have a certain glitch (I know how to fix it). I made this cover of "Hymn of The Fayth" from "Final Fantasy X" on it using free stuff I found: http://soundcloud.com/icecheetah/hymn-of-the-fayth2 (incomplete, I just wanted to show that it's not entirely beepy).

And if you're willing to make a small initial investment, the magazine "Computer Music" includes a complete music making toolkit with every issue.

Edit: removing a rouge letter

 

[partial]

Musescore let's you create and play sheet music. It also runs on Win, Mac and Linux.
Lilypond seems to be similar to Musescore. It also focuses on sheet music, from the looks of things. Runs on Win, Mac and Linux.
Denemo is... pretty much exactly like Lilypond? Runs on Win, Mac and Linux.
Rosegarden has sheet music making and MIDI composing functions, I guess. But this is only for Linux.
Qtractor is a MIDI sequencer for Linux.
Hydrogen is... hard to explain. I'm not sure, but it's for Win, Mac and Linux.
Buzz is a drum sequencer for Windows.
CAUSTIC is for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS.
Ohm Studio is for Windows and Mac. I guess it's a MIDI sequencer, too?
Pxtone is free, but... it's limited. It doesn't have VST funtions and as far as I know notes can only be entered with a mouse. The program is in Japanese, but you can translate it to English by deleting Japanese.ico. It's for Windows only, I think.

 

[stormylullaby]

Please don't necro threads. Locking to prevent further replies.