List of music software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a list of software for creating, performing, learning, analyzing, researching, broadcasting and editing music. This article only includes software, not services. For streaming services such as iHeartRadio, Pandora, Prime Music, and Spotify, see Comparison of on-demand streaming music services. For storage, uploading, downloading and streaming of music via the cloud, see Comparison of online music lockers. This list does not include discontinued historic or legacy software, with the exception of trackers that are still supported.[1][2] For example, the company Ars Nova produces music education software, and its software program Practica Musica has remnants of the historic Palestrina software. Practica will be listed here, but not Palestrina.[3] If a program fits several categories, such as a comprehensive digital audio workstation or a foundation programming language (e.g. Pure Data), listing is limited to its top three categories.

Types of music software[]

CD ripping software[]

Choir and learn-to-sing software[]

This section includes both choir software and learn-to-sing software. For music learning software, see music education software.
Main articles: Choir and Vocal coach

DJ software[]

Main article: DJ § Software

Digital audio workstation (DAW) software[]

Main article: Digital audio workstation

Computer music software[]

Electronic music
Experimental forms
  • Ambient music
  • Electroacoustic music
  • Glitch
  • Industrial music
  • Noise music
Popular styles
  • Breakbeat
  • Chiptune
  • Dancehall
  • Downtempo
  • Drum and bass
  • Dub
  • Dubstep
  • Electro
  • EDM
  • Grime
  • Hardcore
  • House
  • IDM
  • Reggaeton
  • Synth-pop
  • Techno
  • Trance
  • UK garage
  • Vaporwave
Other topics
  • Disco
  • In rock music
  • In folk music
  • Electronic music (popular)
  • Loudspeaker
  • List of genres
  • Plunderphonics
  • Studio as compositional tool
  • Turntablism
    • Hip hop
  • Sound system
  • Video game music
  • v
  • t
Main article: Computer music
See also: List of audio programming languages

Internet, RSS, broadcast music software[]

Main article: Netlabel
See also: Content delivery network

This section only includes software, not services. For services programs like Spotify, Pandora, Prime Music, etc. see Comparison of on-demand streaming music services. Likewise, list includes music RSS apps, widgets and software, but for a list of actual feeds, see Comparison of feed aggregators. For music broadcast software lists in the cloud, see Content delivery network and Comparison of online music lockers.

Lyrics and vocals[]

See also: List of vocoders § Software vocoder models

MIDI plug-ins[]

Main article: Audio plug-in
  • Bitcrusher
  • Chorus effect
  • Delay (audio effect)
  • Dither
  • Jamstix
  • Liquid Rhythm
  • MachFive (MOTU Mark of the Unicorn)
  • MCDSP (Metropolis Group)
  • Midijet pro
  • Native Instruments's B4, Electrik Piano, Guitar Rig 2
  • OrangeVocoder (Prosoniq)
  • Producer Factory Pro Bundle (DigiDesign via Avid Audio)
  • SoundFont (Integrates synthesized/sampled MIDI files with recorded music)
  • Symphonic Instrument (MOTU Mark of the Unicorn)
  • TL Space Native Edition (Trillium Labs dist. by DigiDesign via Avid Audio)

Music analysis software[]

Main article: Musical analysis
See also: Spectrum analyzer

Music circuit software[]

See also: Audio electronics and circuit bending

Music composing software[]

See also: Algorithmic composition

Music conversion software[]

See also: List of audio conversion software

Music education software[]

This section is about music learning software. For choir and learn-to-sing software, see § Choir and Learn to Sing Software.
Main article: Comparison of music education software
  • Soundtrap
  • EarMaster
  • GNU Solfege (ear-training practice exercises)
  • Reaktor (software creation of nearly every instrument; reverse engineering encouraged)
  • Rocksmith (video game with emphasis on instructional aspects; unique in that controller can be any electric guitar w/ 1/4" jack)
  • Synthesia (video game with piano instruction aspects)
  • WaveSurfer (studies of acoustic phonetics)
  • Yousician (educational game to learn to play guitar and piano)

Music gaming software[]

See also: Video game music and Dynamic music
  • Beat Saber
  • Crypt of the NecroDancer
  • osu!
  • Music Tech
  • Rocksmith (Video game with some instructional aspects; unique in that controller can be almost any electric guitar)

Music mathematics software[]

Main article: Music and mathematics
See also: Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music and Mathematical software
  • JFugue, an API for music programming that is designed to support generative and algorithmic music
  • Julia (programming language) (MIT freeware, new, high-level dynamic programming language competing with R (programming language), MATLAB and GNU Octave.)
  • Scala, a program for creating and analysing musical scales
  • Wolfram Language provides built-in functionality for audio generation, as well signal processing, audio signal processing and MIDI.[4]

Music notation software[]

Main article: Scorewriter

Music player software[]

Main article: Comparison of audio player software

Music research software[]

Main article: Sound and music computing
  • ScoreCloud (Notation research)

Music technology, synthesis and o/s software[]

See also: Software synthesizer

Music visualization software[]

Main article: Music visualization
  • Advanced Visualization Studio (Justin Frankel) (platform: Windows)
  • Cthugha (1993, Kevin "Zaph" Burfitt) (platform: DOS)
  • Magic Music Visuals (since 2012, Color & Music, LLC) (platforms: Windows, OS X)
  • MilkDrop (2001-2012, Ryan Geiss) reimplemented as projectM (platforms: Windows, Linux, Android)
  • Neon (2004, Jeff Minter and Ivan Zorzin) (platform: Xbox 360)
  • Psychedelia, (1984, Jeff Minter), an early "light synthesizer", did not use audio input but was designed to create visualizations in accompaniment to music.
  • Pure Data (e.g. visualization of incoming music signals)
  • Virtual Light Machine (1990, Jeff Minter) (platform: Atari Jaguar)
  • Visual Music Tone Painter (1992–2004)[6]

Orchestration software[]

This section is about music orchestration software. For orchestration software as used in information technology, see Orchestration (computing).

Drums and percussion[]

Guitar[]

Piano[]

  • Kurzweil Digital Piano
  • Pianoteq (Modartt)
  • SGX-1 Premium Piano
  • Synthesia
  • Virtual piano

Pipe organ[]

  • Hauptwerk produces audio in response to MIDI signal from attached keyboard or from a MIDI sequencer[7]

Automatic composition software[]

Main article: Music and artificial intelligence
See also: Robotic art
  • Experiments in Musical Intelligence

Samplers and sequencers[]

See also: Comparison of MIDI editors and sequencers
  • Electribe
  • Music sequencer (Article includes extensive list)
  • Propellerhead
  • SoundFont (Integrates synthesized/sampled MIDI files with recorded music)

Soundtrack creation software[]

Main article: Soundtrack
See also: Multitrack recording and Sound recording and reproduction

Trackers[]

Main article: Music tracker

Historical tracker software:

Name Latest
update 		License OS versions File format support VST
support 		ASIO
output
Windows OS X Linux MID MOD XM IT S3M
Renoise 2021-01-03 Commercial Yes Yes Yes Load Load Load Load No Yes Yes
OpenMPT 2022-01-30 BSD Yes Yes-Wine Yes-Wine Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
SoundTracker 2020-07-29 GPL No No Yes No Yes Yes No No No No
MilkyTracker  2020-12-12 GPL Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Load Load No Yes
Buzztrax 2015-09-03 LGPL Yes Yes Yes Load Load Load Load No Yes Yes
Psycle 2017-03 GPL Yes No No No Load Yes Load Load Yes Yes

Virtual Studio Technology hosting software[]

Virtual synthesizer and studio software[]

See also: Virtual Studio Technology
Main category: Software synthesizers

Wave editors[]

See also[]

Main articles: Outline of music and Index of music articles

References[]

  1. ^ "Short History of Computer Music". UCSC.edu. Retrieved 11 June 2015.
  2. ^ Twells, John. "The 14 pieces of software that shaped modern music". Fact Mag. Archived from the original on Apr 23, 2014. Retrieved 11 June 2015.
  3. ^ Walter B. Hewlett, Computing in Musicology, 1990, p. 112, Stanford Music Lab, Menlo Park, CA. Ars Nova (educational music software company, not music style) is at Ars Nova Software
  4. ^ "Sound and Sonification—Wolfram Language Documentation". Retrieved 5 January 2017.
  5. ^ "Music & Math". Retrieved 5 January 2017.
  6. ^ Intelligence, new visions of artificial intelligence in practice. Vol. 11. Association for Computing Machinery. 2000.
  7. ^ Thomas Wichmann, The Hauptwerk Computer Program, Review in The American Organist, July 2004
  8. ^ "VST plug-ins". Audacity Wiki.
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