I got a song in my head

July 23, 2017 10:10 PM

I'm looking for free music composition software and associated tutorials. I want to get this song down.

Assume I know some music theory.

posted by the man of twists and turns to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

MuseScore is pretty good. Free, and easy to learn.
posted by metaseeker at 10:31 PM on July 23, 2017

I use MuseScore as well. I find it tricky because you have to do everything in just the right order or you can get in bit of A mess. But it will do the job, and maybe all the other options are just as finicky.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:49 AM on July 24, 2017

the thing that made me delete MuseScore was, the shortcut it created on my Mac always had an date of today in the file list. Why? Is it phoning home every day and somehow touching that file?
posted by thelonius at 5:17 AM on July 24, 2017

"music composition software" could mean a lot of different things these days. What do you want the software to do for you? If you can explain more about what you want, you might get better suggestions.

E.g. if you just want to make high quality sheet music, check out LilyPond, which is free and open source and has beautiful output.

But Digital Audio Workstations are also music composition powerhouses, allowing full writing/scoring/recording/mixing and generally everything you need for production of pro-quality audio tracks. Reaper is only $60 and has a generous free trial.

If you primarily want recording and editing of audio, Audacity is free, open source, and powerful.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:36 AM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]