You can produce professional music entirely with free software. Here’s the stack.

LMMS — Digital Audio Workstation

LMMS (Linux MultiMedia Studio) is a free DAW with built-in synthesizers, a beat/bassline editor, and MIDI support. Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux via Flatpak.

MuseScore — Sheet Music & Composition

MuseScore is the standard for music notation. Write scores, hear them played back, and export as PDF, MIDI, or audio. Huge community library of shared scores.

Audacity — Audio Editor

Record, edit, and mix audio tracks. Multi-track recording, noise reduction, EQ, compression. Essential for podcast and music recording.

Vital — Wavetable Synthesizer

Vital is a spectral warping wavetable synthesizer. The free tier is fully functional with fewer presets. It sounds incredible and the visual feedback makes sound design intuitive.

Getting Started

# LMMS
brew install --cask lmms
# MuseScore
brew install --cask musescore