Like many other niches, music
production was not really a Linux forte. But that's changing
now and like what happened to the
video editing scene, popular music
production tools are finding its way into Linux. Though I love
listening to all kinds of music, I'm no music production
expert. And hence I can't pass informative judgments on any of
the applications you're going to read about in the article
below. Consider this blogpost as a brief introduction to
different music production tools available for Ubuntu and
Linux, and not as a review per se. So here we go again. 10
useful music production tools for Ubuntu and Linux.
Bitwig Studio Digital Audio Workstation
- Bitwig Studio is a multi-platform (supports Windows, Mac
and Linux) music-creation tool for production, performance
and DJing.
- Bitwig Studio is made by developers that used to work on
Ableton Live, a Windows only Digital Audio Workstation
(DAW). And like Lightworks for video editing, Bitwig
Studio will be a professional grade music production tool
with support for Linux platform.
- Expected release date: March 26, 2014. Know more.
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Ardour: Audio mixing software for Linux
- Record, edit and mix audio using Ardour. Supports Linux
and Mac.
- Ardour is open source and is released under GPLv2/GPLv3
license.
- Ardour is a great example of commercial free-libre
software. Users who download from ardour.org are asked to
pay at least $1 for downloading prebuilt binaries of
Ardour; those users then have the right to obtain minor
updates until the next major release.
- Another option is to subscribe by paying $1, $4 or $10
per month. Subscribers can download prebuilt binaries of
all updates during the subscription period.
- Without paying anything, users can download the full
source code for all platforms.
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Renoise Digital Audio Workstation
- Renoise is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) with a
unique top-down approach to music composition known as a
tracker interface.
- Features include full MIDI and MIDI sync support, VST
2.0 plugin support, ASIO multi I/O cards support,
integrated sampler and sample editor, internal real-time
DSP effects with unlimited number of effects per track,
master and send tracks, full automation of all commands,
hi-fi .WAV rendering (up to 32 bit 96 kHz), Rewire
support, etc.
- A full version of Renoise cost USD 78.00, which is
noticeably cheaper than competing digital audio
workstations (DAWs) such as Ableton Live and even the
upcoming Bitwig Studio which costs around USD 749 and USD
400 (rumored) respectively.
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Tracktion Music Production Software for Linux
- Tracktion is yet another high-profile entrant into the
Linux music production scene.
- Tracktion is a digital audio workstation for recording
and editing audio and MIDI. The project was started with
the intention of creating the most easy-to-use music
production tool out there. Tracktion is proprietary
though.
- Support for a wide range of audio formats
including WAV, AIFF and Ogg-Vorbis.
- Tracktion beta version for Linux is free now. Get it here.
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Rosegarden Digital Audio Workstation (Linux exclusive)
- Rosegarden
is an open source digital audio workstation for Linux,
based around a MIDI sequencer that features a rich
understanding of music notation and includes basic support
for digital audio.
- Ideal for composers, musicians, and students working
from a small studio or home recording environments. Quite
easy to learn and runs exclusively on Linux.
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Hydrogen: Advanced drum machine for Linux
- Hydrogen is an advanced drum machine for Linux, an
electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the
sound of drums or similar percussion instruments.
- Hydrogen's interface uses Qt library and the entire
code-base is released to the public under the GNU
General Public License.
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Mixxx: Linux's very own professional DJing software
- Mixxx is a free and open source digital DJing software
that allows mixing music in your Linux system with ease.
- Mixxx started off as a humble project for a doctoral
thesis way back in 2001. Today it is a full-fledged
application that is downloaded over one million times
annually.
- It is licensed under the GPL (v2.0 or later) and runs on
all major desktop operating systems.
- More download options here.
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Audacity: Record and edit music in Linux with ease
- Audacity is the most well-known application here,
and perhaps the most basic too.
- Audacity is a free and open source, cross-platform
software for recording and editing all kinds of music and
audio. It is one of the most downloaded software in
SourceForge, with nearly 100 million downloads.
- More download options for Audacity can be found here.
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