Open Source Music Production Apps for Windows

Free cross-platform DAW supporting VST plugins, MIDI, and lossless audio. Offers music loopers and sequencers with privacy, no ads, and offline capability.

Create, notate, and playback music with free, open-source software for Windows, Mac, and Linux supporting MIDI, MusicXML, PDF export, and community sharing.

Ardour is a hard disk recorder and digital audio workstation application. Record, edit, and mix on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Carla is an audio plugin host, with support for many audio drivers and plugin formats. It has some nice features like automation of parameters via MIDI CC (and send output back as MIDI too) and full OSC control.

Zrythm is a digital audio workstation designed to be featureful and easy to use.

Bespoke is a software modular synthesizer. It contains a bunch of modules, which you can connect together to create sounds.

A Multitrack tablature editor and player.

VCV Rack is a modular synthesizer inspired by Eurorack systems. It acts a host for virtual modules which perform various audio processes. E.G. oscillators, filters, envelope generators, sequencers and more that can be connected freely in almost limitless combinations.

OpenMPT (short hand for Open ModPlug Tracker) is a popular tracker software for Windows. OpenMPT is completely free and allows you to create and play back some great music on your computer. Based on the original ModPlug Tracker written by Olivier Lapicque, OpenMPT is free...

FamiStudio is very simple music editor for the Nintendo Entertainment System or Famicom. It is designed to be easier to use than FamiTracker, but its feature set is also much more limited. It is targeted at both chiptune artists and NES homebrewers.

Helio is a cross-platform lightweight music speed-painting tool. It features linear-based sequencer with clean UI, integrated version control to sync the projects between devices, export to midi and more.

MilkyTracker is an open source, multi-platform music application for creating .MOD and .XM module files. It attempts to recreate the module replay and user experience of the popular DOS program Fasttracker II, with special playback modes available for improved Amiga ProTracker...

Vital is a spectral warping wavetable synthesizer with drag'n'drop modulation workflow and animated preview of the synth's inner workings where needed. Comes with many modulation sources (including audio-rate), MPE support and FX chain.

Helm is a free, cross-platform, polyphonic synthesizer with a powerful modulation system. Helm runs on GNU/Linux, Mac, and Windows as a standalone program or LV2/VST/VST3/AU plugin.

OpenUtau is an open source editing environment for UTAU community with modern user experience.

Pd (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. It is the third major branch of the family of patcher programming languages known as Max (Max/FTS, ISPW Max, Max/MSP, jMax, etc.

Giada is a free, minimal, hardcore audio tool for DJs, live performers and electronic musicians. Just pick up your channel, fill it with samples or MIDI events and start the show by using this tiny piece of software as a loop machine, drum machine, sequencer, live sampler or yet...

Schism Tracker is a free reimplementation of Impulse Tracker, a program used to create high quality music without the requirements of specialized, expensive equipment, and with a unique "finger feel" that is difficult to replicate in part.

Bosca Ceoil is all about looping, and designed that way at its heart. Songs are built up from lots of tiny 16 note patterns – the intended workflow is that you loop over these single patterns until you have something you like, then you start making variations.

GNU LilyPond is a computer program for music engraving. One of LilyPonds major goals is to produce scores that are engraved with traditional layout rules, reflecting the era when scores were engraved by hand.

Node based GUI for The Composers Desktop Project.

Radium is a music editor with a new type of interface.

Psycle is a Music tracker (like FastTracker 2 or Impulse Tracker) combined with plugin modularity. It supports its own plugin API, the VST2 plugin standard, and a tracker style sampler playback.

"Sekaiju" is a free, open source MIDI sequencer software for creating and editing MIDI data. This software enables you to create music with your MIDI modules or synthesizers. Sekaiju also can be used as a powerful MIDI editor.

A beginner-friendly music making app.