BUILD YOUR ALL-NEW FREE STUDIO

No, it's not just another freeware roundup of titles you've seen in countless 'best of' lists before. This time we're ditching the old guard, going for quality rather than quantity, and looking at some of the newest and most exciting freeware releases around and how to use them in your music productions. And all for free, of course!

Fancy a free softsynth, drum machine, compressor or reverb? You’re in luck! You can grab them all right now, plus a thousand other similar titles. Yes, the world of freeware has so many options that you can quickly and easily compile the main components of a virtual recording studio. But, the fact is that there are so many freeware options to choose from, that you could spend an age filling your bandwidth and hard drives with downloads and then what have you got? Severe plugin bloat and the tyranny of choice, that’s what! Inevitably, you’ll end up spending more time choosing and auditioning than you will creating.

And that’s why, every year or so, we take a look at the whole ecosphere of free music software, to save you the download time, and highlight the best free titles. However, here at Computer Music, we’ve noticed that many of the most common recommendations have been around for years. In fact, we can’t recall a time when Synth1 and Crystal – as great as they are – haven’t been in a top 10 free synth list. 

And this is to the detriment of many a new title as over the last couple of years, there’s been an explosion in amazing-looking, newer freeware options for all studio tasks. The point of this feature is to hone in on these more recent releases, as well as the ones you might have missed along the way.

We’re not saying that the old guard aren’t worth a download – they certainly are! But there’s a sea of new faces out there, in danger of being ignored. So, we’ll focus the freeware gems that we should all be using but might be getting lost.