Free (or close to free) electronic music composition software?

[manosaurus]

I am a contemporary classical music composer and I am wondering if anyone knows of any programs for manipulating sound? I don't mean like gargageband or audacity. I don't want to record guitars or voice or anything and I am not looking to write electronica or beats or anything. I am looking for a program where one can manipulate several base frequencies into more complex waves by using effects, filters and automation. I used audiomulch (the perfect program for this stuff) for Windows but it is not available for OS X yet.

 

[zimv20]

do you know about max?

 

[scottlinux]

do you know about max?

He did say free.


These are a few:

Ceclia (Csound)
http://www.jeanpiche.com/software.htm

Soundhack (a classic)
http://www.soundhack.com/

PD (like Max/MSP. Project developer is Max/MSP developer)
http://puredata.info/

Supercollider
http://www.audiosynth.com/

Csound5 was recently released. You can find a csound5 binary out there and use that with Cecilia.

 

[zimv20]

He did say free.

or close, which is relative

i linked to the wikipedia page instead of cycle74 because they listed all those variants.

 

[manosaurus]

Thanks!

All of those programs look like options. Max and Cecilia look like nice. I'll have time to try them out tonight. Have you guys used them a lot? Do you have any compositions that you have written with the programs that I could listen to?

 

[zimv20]

i've not used any of them. the last time i "composed" something was, errr, nearly 20 years ago, and i used MOTU's Composer.

messing around with Max is something i've been telling myself i'll do in my spare time for over 10 years now.