Software Sound Synthesis & Music Composition Packages

General Synthesis Packages
- Amber granular synthesis for Linux and MacOS
- Audiality David Olofson's "audio engine... designed for playing music and sound effects..."
- ChucK an audio programming language for realtime synthesis, composition, and performance, from Ge Wang and Perry Cook
- CLAM is the C++ Library for Audio and Music from the very talented crew at UPF
- Dissociated Studio takes an audio file, segments it, computes a segment similarity matrix, and plays the piece, skipping from segment to similar segment; very cool software from Aaron Lav
- Fugue music & sound programming language by Roger Dannenberg
- InSpect sound analysis/resynthesis/transformation from Sylvain Marchand
- JASS the Java Audio Synthesis System, from Kees van den Doel
- Loris sound modeling and morphing software from the CERL Sound Group
- MARSYAS software from George Tzanetakis for music analysis, retrieval, and synthesis for audio signals
- The MusicKit is being ported from NeXTStep to Linux
- OpenSoundWorld Amar Chaudhary's "...scalable, extensible programming environment that allows sound designers and musicians to process sound in response to expressive real-time control..."
- SAOL
  - MPEG-4 Structured Audio: Developer Tools a page from John Lazzaro and John Wawrzynek, includes the indispensable sfront
  - SAOLsound Paul Winkler's project "... to provide resources for Csound users interested in exploring SAOL"
  - Sounds in SA some SAOL-encoded music
- Sapphire an audio synthesis language by Jim Finnis
- Scripts: Sound for Csound, PowerPV, and TrikTraks, from Drew Krause
- SMS comes from Xavier Serra
- SndObj/pySndObj Victor Lazzarini's "object-oriented cross-platform audio development tools and sample programs...for the quick design of sound processing applications"
- Spectroscopic Toolkit "64-bit phase oscillators for nanotonal synthesis", from Pieter Suurmond
- Spiral Synthesis materials from Tracy Lind Petersen
- Squeak a Smalltalk-80 environment with built-in support for realtime sound synthesis
- STK Perry Cook's excellent Synthesis ToolKit
- SuperCollider3 James McCartney's famous realtime audio server and object-oriented sound synthesis language
- Tao physical modelling synthesis language and GUI, from Mark Pearson
- TAPESTREA "Techniques And Paradigms for Expressive Synthesis, Transformation, and Rendering of Environmental Audio"
- Theo Verelst Additive Synthesis Program an additive synthesis program, from Theo Verelst
- Varese synthesis/composition environment from Peter Hanappe
- Virtual Sound audio synthesis tools from Christos Dimitrakakis
- WONDER "Wave-field synthesis Of New Dimensions of Electronic music in Realtime", software from Marije Baalman and Daniel Plewe
- foo scriptable/interactive non-realtime sound synthesis and audio processing environment, from Martin Rumori and the foo Crew
- gAlan the very cool graphical audio language, originally from Tony Garnock-Jones and now maintained by Torben Hohn
- rt_lpc real-time LPC analysis/synthesis/visualization from the Princeton Soundlab
- wigwamjam "... grows sounds using your decisions to drive the evolution of genetically programmed synth functions", from Dave Griffiths
General Music Composition/Analysis Packages
- Amuc is the Amsterdam Music Composer, from Wouter Boeke
- Common Music Rick Taube's "truly general computer language for music composition"
  - Notes From The Metalevel Rick's excellent book on Common Music, a must-have for all students and users
  - Scripts: Music routines for Common Music, MIDI and music scripts in Perl, by Drew Krause
- Haskore Computer Music System is a collection of Haskell modules designed for creating musical structures in a high-level style similar to functional programming languages
- The Humdrum Toolkit software tools for music analysis and research
- JFugue Dave Koelle's Java classes for music programming
- JMSL the most excellent Java Music Specification Language, from Nick Didkovsky and Phil Burk
- LMUSeJ Lindenmayer fractal music software from David Sharp, requires JDK1.3
- LMMS it's the Linux MultiMedia Studio, "... a free alternative to popular programs like FruityLoops, Cubase and Logic"
- Mondrian music composition language from Peter Brinkmann
- Musica "... aims at the creation of a complete Mathematica package for the exploration of the interconnection between Mathematics and Music"
- MusicScript "...an open-source music scripting language..."
- OpenMusic the famous software from IRCAM now available in a version for Linux
- ProteinMusic converts DNA sequences to music, requires Java
- Radium unique graphic music-making environment with similarities to module trackers and MIDI sequencers
- Randomposer an automatic-music composer from Stephan Beyer
- Subvert Audio Niall Moody's "... music program designed to try and stimulate creativity in the user"
- XEMO is a "...vision of an integrated composition environment for the analysis, notation and composition of music"
- compo is "a language allowing to describe in a natural way simple or complex musical structures"
- variations algorithmic composition system developed by Bruce Jacob
- wx12Ton utility for composing and analysing 12-tone rows, requires wxWindows
MAX-like Environments
- Pd
  - Pd Pure Data, a language from Miller Puckette
  - PDa "Puredata anywhere", a version for PDAs, prepared by Günter Geiger
  - Pd-Page documentation, research, and patches from Thomas Grill and Marius Schebella
  - Plugins: Q & Faust for Pd very cool stuff from Dr. Albert Graef
  - The Pure Data Portal excellent resource site for Pd users
  - footils Frank Barknecht's treasure trove of programs, code, and utilities for Pd
- jMax
  - jMax MAX for Linux and Java, from François Déchelle's team at IRCAM
  - jMax-SDIF imports SDIF files into a track of matrices, exports a track to SDIF; from Diemo Schwartz
  - jMax Tutorial instructive documentation from Fabrice Medio
MusicV-based Languages
- Cmix is from Paul Lansky and the Princeton Sound Kitchen
- Common LISP Music comes from Bill Schottstaedt at CCRMA
  - ATS/ATSH Lisp functions for spectral analysis, audio transformation, and sound synthesis, intended for use with CLM
- Csound Barry Vercoe's gift to the world of computer music and sound synthesis
- Music4C is from James Beauchamp at UIUC
- Nyquist for Linux a patched version of the UNIX Nyquist source package by Roger Dannenberg
- RTCmix is a version of Cmix maintained by Dave Topper, Luke DuBois, Brad Garton, and John Gibson; RTmix is Ivica Ico Bukvic's "performance tool geared towards persons interested in live and interactive electro-acoustic music", especially suited for use with RTCmix
- cmusic is now available in Shahrokh Yadegari's port of the CARL software to Linux
Please see the Csound & Cmix Helpers section for related software.
Softsynths And Samplers Note: More softsynths can be found on the Audio Plugins page
- ALSA Modular Synth outstanding softsynth fun from Dr. Matthias Nagorni
- AUBE/Metadecks is "...a system for realtime sound generation and processing"
- BEAST/BSE music composition and audio synthesis package with Gtk interface, from Tim Janik and Olaf Hoehmann
- Bristol cool multiple synthesizer emulator from Nick Copeland
- Chionic Linux sampling software from Juan Linietsky
- Cumulus real-time granular synthesis with MIDI control
- Delfin a realtime software sampler
- Didgeridoo "a voice controlled resonance instrument" from Stefan Nitschke, requires JACK and a microphone
- Elara a very cool software synth from Steve Brookes
- FluidSynth
  - FluidSynth an outstanding Soundfont synthesizer (formerly known as iiwusynth) from Peter Hanappe and many others
  - FluidGUI Ken Ellinwood adds a nice graphic interface to FluidSynth
  - QSynth Qt GUI Interface for FluidSynth
- FMS is Daniel Gruen's Frequency Module Synthesizer
- Internet Synth Henry Lowengard's contribution to sound on the Web (source available by request)
- Javasynth a "Java-based system for creating fully working modular audio systems, which are assembled with programmed functional components."
- LegaSynth a new softsynth from Juan Linietsky
- LinuxSampler
  - Linuxsampler it's *the* Linux sampler project, supports sample libraries in GIG, DLS, and Akai formats
  - JSampler a Java-based front-end for the Linuxsampler engine
  - QSampler Rui Nuno Capela's Qt-based GUI for LinuxSampler
- Mathi's Music Magic real-time software synthesizer and audio processor; also available here (RPM only)
- MFFM VectorBass a new software synthesizer from Matt Flax
- Mono nice monophonic real-time synthesizer from Jarno Seppanen
- MSS is Mats Olsson's very nice Modular Software Synth
- Mx44 a realtime software synthesizer from Jens M. Andreasen
- Octavian software synthesizer pre-beta release now on-line
- Om Dave Robillard's "... modular synthesizer that runs under JACK and uses LADSPA and/or DSSI plugins for processing"
- PSIndustrializer neat physical modeling synth with OpenGL graphics
- RTSynth an excellent realtime synthesizer for X
- Slat "Sounds like a theremin", neat synth software from James Shuttlesworth
- Specimen a MIDI-controllable audio sampler from Peter Bessman, now maintained by Eric Rzewnicki
- SpiralSynth
  - Spiral Synth very cool realtime software synthesizer
  - Spiral Synth Modular modular software synth, roll your own synthesizer with its plugins
  - SpiralLoops a loop-based sampler with plugin support
- Syncotron Bathysphere Sound Suite interesting sampler/sequencer
- Ultramaster Juno-6 software emulation of the classic Roland analog synth
- Xsynth MIDI-controlled analog-style realtime synthesizer from Steve Brookes
- Zerius Synth software synthesizer with Java GUI
- ZynAddSubFX an impressive new softsynth from Paul Nasca in Romania
- amSynthe very cool analog synth modelling from Nick Dowell
- aRts "simulates a complete modular analog synthesizer" but is also the well-known sound server for KDE
- fastbreeder Dave Griffiths' neat "genetic progamming synth"
- gsynth "...an extensible, modular synthesizer...the interface and current codebase present a simple Roland TB-303 emulator...programmed using fasttracker-style note entry"
- jackMiniSynth a minimal subtractive synth (with Moog filter) for JACK
- simsam Christian Henz's new "simple sampleplayer"
- sloop.splitter "a realtime sound effect program...generates synthetic sounds from natural ones"
- vOICe Sonification Applet Peter Meijer's very cool synthesizer, requires a Java-capable browser
- wcnt the "WAV Composer Not Toilet" is a non-realtime modular synthesis program
Organ Synths
- Aeolus Fons Adriaensen's fabulous pipe organ synthesizer
- Beatrix excellent organ softsynth from Fredrik Kilander
- Bristol includes Hammond and Vox organ emulations
- GENPO Stephen Merrony's neat "generic pipe organ"
- horgand FM-synthesis organ, JACK-aware, with DSP effects and programmable accompaniment
- jackOrgan an ALSA sequencer/JACK client for David Bartold's LADSPA plugin
- jOrgan neat Java-based organ construction kit
Sonic Environment Generators
- Ambient Automat automatic ambience, synthesis, and more from Double Muffled Dolphin
- Boodler Andrew Plotkin's "programmable soundscape tool"
- Radio Hard Disk unique application from the MidiShare team
- SoundGrid an interesting Java-based music application somewhat similar to Music Mouse
- Soundweave cool looping mechanism to produce endlessly changing sound textures
- jlooch drones courtesy Brad Garton and Java, requires Phil Burk's JSyn
- phazor creates ambient textures by a very interesting use of the FFT
- whitenoise utility to turn your computer into a random noise generator
Waveform Generators
- COW Cow Outputs Waves, "C++ classes handling graphs for amplitude and frequency and generating wavfiles out of these graphs"
- oa GUI for synthesizing and experimenting with waveforms, from Cedric Roux
- soundmosaic "...constructs an approximation of one sound out of small pieces of other sounds", cool software from Steven Hazel
Manuals And Other Documentation
- CLMS Manuals useful on-line material for various SWSS languages, MIDI software and hardware, and synthesis methods
- The PLUM Page Tim Thompson's on-line list of programming languages used for music