So, right now I need to make some music tracks for my game, but, the only software I have is Musescore. Yes, it’s a good one, but the quality of the sound isn’t too good.
Is there any FREE software that I can download to make music? Or if now, and CHEAP ones? Any help is appreciated.
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I’ve personally used Audacity in school and home use. It’s free and open sourced. It’s good for sound production and design imo. You can get it here: https://www.audacityteam.org/
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Can you show me some things you can do with it? I’m having trouble figuring it out? XD. I don’t know how to make music with that.
Wait, I can’t actually make music with that. At least, not like the writing music way.
You can’t really get good quality sounds without paying a little bit. I’m currently using Ableton Suite. As mentioned above, audacity is free. Audacity specializes in audio. For actually wanting to make a track, Reaper is probably your best option. Reaper allows you to use multiple instruments and such with ease. I’ve never had luck doing this with audacity. Reaper starts at $60.
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I normally use apple’s GarageBand. It’s free for people with iOS or macOS and has plenty of built-in instruments, loops that you can use to quickly throw something together, effects, and more. I prefer the macOS version as it has more content (instruments, effects, loops) than the iOS version.
If you don’t have an apple device, then I’d recommend Soundtrap, as @Chordily mentioned.
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I do have an apple device, but then, garage band is really limited.
You should watch some videos of people recreating complex music on garage band. Garage band could be used to produce great stuff if you know what you’re doing. A good artist can always utilize his tools. Although it may not have hundreds of features, you could still write a brilliant piece on it. It’s about how you utilize those features. Odds are you aren’t going to use every single one. I would recommend Audacity or even getting a free trial for a week/month for a more expensive product. Good luck!
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I use Linux Multimedia Studio, also known as LMMS. It is similar to FL Studio, but it’s free as well. Don’t let the fact that Linux is in the name throw you off, it’s available for Windows as well.
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I would totally recommend FL studio or Ableton but these are extremely expensive and these are hard to learn but there are tons of free copies and tutorials on these.
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I do vouch for this. I currently use Ableton Suite, along with one of the best VST synths on the market, Serum. I also have a subscription to this website called Splice. It’s basically the mother load of synth presets and samples.
Anyways there’s some stuff you should know about both FL and Ableton.
Ableton is more used by people who are wanting to focus on stuff like Future Bass, EDM, House, etc. Basically anything electronic. They have a wide range of all kinds of instruments, their staff team knows what they’re talking about, support is really good there, and their effects are really good.
FL Studio is the home for trap producers (basically the music people like Lil Peep make). FL focuses more on the actual arrangement instead of actually wanting to put a decent song together. They don’t have a lot of good plugins you can use.
GarageBand is good if you do want to do acoustical stuff. I know the instruments aren’t top notch. This is where Splice comes in. Let’s say you want a guitar sound. With Splice, you can just search guitar one shots (I usually look for ones in the key of C as it’s easier). You’d put this into something called a Sampler. Not sure if GarageBand has this on the Mac version. If not, there’s a lot of free plugins for this.
The intro version for Ableton starts at $100. I did start producing on GarageBand, but switched to Ableton since my parents got me it for Christmas one year. FL also starts at $100.
Ableton’s trial version is basically access to the Suite version for 30 days. FL’s trial is you have access to everything, but cannot save your files. I think you can export but not sure.
Splice starts at $8 a month. I say starts as there are different subscriptions. Splice uses this thing called “credits.” Credits are used to purchase presets and samples. Each can vary from 1-3 credits from what I’ve seen.
Now obviously I know you probably don’t want to invest $100 on something you don’t know much about. There’s this musician website called Sweetwater. They offer a thing where you pay a certain amount each month until you pay it off.
Hope this helps!
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If you need more help with this, feel free to add me on Discord. I can probably answer any questions you have on anything. Paige#3587
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As several others within this thread have stated, Garageband seems to be among one of the best single DAWs (That’s a unique term you’re always going to want to use should you become more and more familiar with them) out there, and yes, it is entirely free,
It it entirely normal if you do no prefer to use Garageband, and I have seen that you, Top, said so when you said it is limited.
While I can agree that if you’re looking for more fully acoustic tracks as well as natural sounding ones, it would take you higher and more… complex sound engineering skills to achieve so.
Bottom line I highly recommend using Garageband, an app I use for my compositions personally, is best if you like creating unique sounds and having sort of a musical/structural template of your piece where other software types don’t provide it.
You should get back to it, Top!
Let me share a small, quick part of a piece that I wrote myself,
Mainly to give you an idea of what Garageband can do and what sounds you can make to give your game’s soundtrack character.
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