this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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41
what open source tools do you use for music? (lemmy.org)
submitted 6 days ago by alex_riv@lemmy.org to c/programming@programming.dev
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web dev here who also plays guitar. i've been using audacity for recording and musescore for notation but wondering what else is out there.

anyone using anything cool for practice, transcription, or just messing around with sound?

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[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Maybe this post would be better suited for !musicproduction@sh.itjust.works ?

I used Ardour, an entire open source DAW. Definitely more powerful than Audacity for this kind of thing, and I'm much more comfortable with MIDI notation than traditional music notation, too. I did eventually switch to Bitwig though, because I use a lot of samples and synth plugins and Bitwig's workflow and UI for that is just a lot better than Ardour's.

There are quite a few pretty good open source VST/LV2 plugins, e.g. ZynAddSubFX is a really powerful software synth and Dragonfly Reverb is a neat reverb. There are more, unfortunately many open source plugins are only available in LV2 format and unfortunately Bitwig doesn't support LV2.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I’d recommend the fork Tenacity over Audacity since the latter has been hijacked by Muse Group.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

define "hijacked". what we've gotten so far is optional telemetry, a well-needed ui cleanup, and a potential new logo. and it's still open source, with a written guarantee that it will not change.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 6 points 5 days ago

They updated the privacy policy and contributor license agreement with no regard for the existing GPL license, or the 20 years of contributor work before them. They snuck in telemetry that uses Googles services. Since then they’ve turned the website into a massive advertisement for Muse’s cloud BS and subscription services, seriously go compare the site today with one from say 2021. It’s a marked downgrade.

They’ve also added a bunch of Muse cloud bloat to the application.

Muse Group is nasty, and I’ll always encourage people to use a fork instead.

[–] wet_bones@lemmy.4d2.org 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Bespoke Synth is pretty cool.

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 points 6 days ago

First time I've seen that, that is such a cool concept!

[–] itsathursday@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

https://strudel.cc/

[–] catharso@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

there are whole distros with audio focus: ubuntu studio & fedora jam and probably others.

maybe check what they come packaged with. not sure if it's all open source though.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago

Beside the preinstalled software, these distros also use the 'real time' kernel.

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 days ago

Lots of cool classic synth emulators here - true emulators, you need to ahem dump the firmware files from your legally owned gear.

Relevant to programming because they are emulating the DSP chips and they apparently figured them out via de-lidding techniques etc

https://theusualsuspects.io/

[–] Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 days ago

Not really in use due to time constraints but i have installed pro-audio, which is a nice collection of linux compatible audio software:

https://archlinux.org/groups/x86_64/pro-audio/

[–] Apostolique@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

For writing music sheets, I use LilyPond.

I like it quite a lot, been using it for years. It think it gives the best looking output.

[–] emb@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

LMMS is a fairly intuitive editor that makes it easy to build midi tracks and drum loops. Can't really record tho.

Famistudio is specific to chiptune music. I think it's a tracker. Along the same lines, there's MilkyTracker. I haven't figured out how to use them, but they're neat.

[–] ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev 2 points 5 days ago

In LMMS you can import samples and it has VST support, so it is a pretty featured DAW

[–] emb@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Another fun one to mess around with is guitarix. It's like a modeling amp in software form.

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I use a number of things on this github repo of FOSS audio tools.

Things I can recommend:
Vital (wavetable synth)
Dexed (clone of Yamaha DX7, uses sysex preset ibraries)
Dragonfly Reverb (great free reverbs)

Things I need to check out more:
VCV Rack (modular synths)
Neural Amp Modeler (guitar impulse loader)