Many of the best musicians start with good ideas and free software. While we can’t help write your music for you, there is thankfully plenty of free software to go around, including DAWs (digital audio workstations).
Apple GarageBand
GarageBand is the quintessential free music-making app for Apple systems. The best version is arguably the one that comes with macOS, though there are versions available for iPhone and iPad that allow you to work on music in a cross-platform capacity.
Apple’s free DAW is incredibly easy to use, relying on three main track types: software instruments, recorded audio or sample, and a drum track. You can connect a guitar or bass via an audio interface, use MIDI instruments like keyboards to play software instruments, or add an auto drummer to your track so that you can just play along.
If you don’t have hardware or an audio interface you can play instruments with your keyboard, sequence a drum beat using the grid view, or record straight from your device’s microphone. There are a ton of instruments included, with more available for download (and Apple is still adding more content to GarageBand on a semi-regular basis).
On top of instruments, MIDI support, and recording you also get access to Apple Loops, a royalty-free archive of samples that you can use in your own productions. You can build tracks purely using samples if you want and slap effects on them to make them sound completely different.
AVID Pro Tools Intro
If GarageBand is a little too simple for your tastes, why not jump right into the deep end with the Intro tier of AVID Pro Tools. Available for Windows and macOS, AVID makes an app that aims for power and utility over all else. This is a stripped-down free version of Pro Tools, the full version of which starts at $9.99/month.
Despite this, you get a lot for free. Work with up to eight instruments, audio (recording or sample), and MIDI tracks, with four simultaneous recording inputs. You’ll also get the introductory bundle of plugins which includes 36 tools for making music including the AIR Xpand!2 virtual instrument, the Loopmasters sample pack, a set of effects, reverb and delay modules, and more.
The Pro Tools interface may seem a little daunting at first, but it’s designed with pure utility in mind. Though there’s a lot on screen at once, the basics of a multitrack editor, piano roll, and controls for recording and applying effects are in many ways self-explanatory.
On top of this AVID has a whole set of tutorials aimed at getting you up to speed quickly. Learn to program drums, record MIDI performances, take audio from your guitar, track vocals, arrange, mix, and optimize your recording. If you’re bitten by the Pro Tools bug you’ll be able to upgrade to get access to more features as your proficiency grows.
Serato Studio
Serato Studio is a free DAW for Windows and macOS that’s heavily geared towards beat-making and sample-based music production. This is no surprise since Serato is a big name in the DJ world, offering digital vinyl system (DVS) apps like Serato Scratch and Serato DJ.
Serato Studio is focused on scene-based music creation. Add drums, samples, and software instruments to a scene, then move between them to trigger different parts of your song (you’re limited to four scenes in the free version). You can write melodies and bass lines with a piano roll or build beats in a grid-based drum pattern. You can record these parts live using MIDI controllers, or click and drag using your mouse.
There are a ton of built-in “instruments” to get you started, as well as samples to cut up and manipulate as you see fit. Instruments are essentially samples that are tuned to notes of your choosing, while samples are spliced automatically so that you can “play” them to create interesting arrangements. You can also apply a ton of effects to your tracks to completely transform the sound.
Serato Studio is great for a wide range of mostly electronic genres, from standard electronic fare like dance and techno to hip hop, drum and bass, ambient, and more. It’s not necessarily ideal for standard live band recording, but it’s great for directly sampling vinyl, vocals, guitar licks, and so on. The app is surprisingly intuitive to get up and running, and we preferred it to the other sample-based app on this list (AKAI MPC Beats).
There are also a ton of free sound packs that you can download to expand your sample library. If you outgrow the free version you can upgrade to Serato Studio Pro which adds more tracks, more instruments, better recording, automation, and more for $9.99/month.
AKAI MPC Beats
AKAI MPC Beats is a unique DAW and one that might take some getting used to. This is a slimmed-down version of the premium MPC 2 app, which has more features. The app is free but you’ll need to surrender your email address to get a download link. That app has both a Windows and macOS version available.
The MPC brand is best known for being attached to one of the most famous, pad-based samplers of all time. The company still produces hardware, and AKAI MPC Beats is designed to work with it. You can also use other MIDI-based controllers including keyboards and pads, and you’ll need something along these lines to get the most out of it.
You can use the app like a standard DAW to lay down beats and melodies on a piano roll editor, use the built-in samples and instruments, or import your own for a completely original production. Unfortunately, you can’t trigger samples with your computer’s keyboard directly in the app.
LMMS
A truly free, open-source, and cross-platform DAW, LMMS was once known as the Linux MultiMedia Studio. It now goes by an acronym to indicate its true cross-platform appeal, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. LMMS is a no-frills DAW that isn’t short on features but lacks the polish you get with some of these other apps.
That said, the app includes all of the basic features you’d hope to see including support for MIDI input and audio interfaces for controlling and recording. The app relies heavily on Linux technologies like LADSPA (Linux Audio Developer’s Simple Plugin API) for routing and plugins, with support for VSTs (on Windows, at least) and SoundFonts (.SF2 files).
The interface is familiar and utilitarian, with a multitrack view that gives an overview of your current track and piano roll editors for beats, bass lines, and melodies. There’s also support for automation tracks and an effects chain, which you can expand upon with your own plugins.
There’s a fair amount of built-in plugins for making music including synthesizers like TripleOscillator and chiptune synths like Nescaline (NES), FreeBoy (GameBoy), and SID (Commodore 64). There are also percussion synths like Kicker (for kick drums) and Mallets (for melodic percussion).
Audacity
Audacity isn’t a DAW, but rather a multitrack audio editor. It’s an essential tool for quick recording, editing, cleaning up, and mixing audio. It’s a fantastic tool to have available whenever you want to record something quickly, apply effects, mix two files, or cut things up for use in another app.
The app is free, open source, and cross-platform with apps available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, plus a huge number of plugins that you can add right inside the app.
Consider Using Trackers Too
Trackers are not DAWs, and in fact predate the modern DAW by a couple of decades. They were instrumental in the creation of early computerized music, where text-based inputs were used to trigger on-chip synthesizers. This is where chiptune and video game music came from, but trackers aren’t only limited to bleeps and boops, they can also trigger audio samples and hardware or software instruments.
If you have a passing interest in creating chiptune or would like an insight into how electronic music creation was done in the past, there are plenty of trackers that you can download and use for free. They can be intimidating to begin with, difficult to master, fun to use, and downright powerful in the right hands.
Check out free projects like MilkyTracker (Windows, macOS, Linux, and others), modern clones of legendary DOS and AmigaOS trackers FastTracker II and Protracker 2, an open-source clone of the famous DOS-based Impulse Tracker called Schism Tracker, and modern Windows tracker OpenMPT.
If you want to try the most powerful tracker available then grab the demo version of Renoise. Nothing quite comes close in terms of sheer utility, though the app can be a little off-putting for newcomers. The demo version has some limitations and cannot render to WAV, but the overall functionality is the same as the full version ($75).