2023/11/26 (updated 2023/03/11)
A list of free music production plugins and tools.
If you know of a VST or other tool that should be included on this list, contact Claire on the official forums or tag @claire in a forum topic linking to your scripts.
A VST is the most common format for music production plugins. There are other plugin formats, but VST is what most people will use and so you will often see plugins simply referred to as "VSTs". You can read more about plugin formats on Plugin Boutique.
A plugin is any external software that can be embedded in a DAW (digital audio workspace). These usually take the form of either generators (things that produce sound) or effects (things that change sound). Generator plugins will often be referred to as "VSTis" (VST instruments).
Examples of DAWs are Ableton, FL Studio, Cubase, or Logic Pro.
It is not recommended to use Audacity as your DAW. While it technically fits the definition, most people would say it's an audio editor, not a true DAW.
Some people will say that Reaper is a free DAW, however in reality it only has a 60-day free trial. The software will still function after the trial expires, but continuing to use it after the 60-day period is a violation of the license agreement.
Cakewalk is a DAW that is actually available for free (but only for Windows).
No.
Plugins are new tools, and naturally this means you can do more by downloading more, however in many cases there are multiple options that will accomplish the same task in slightly different ways. Most DAWs will come with a suite of generators and effects to get you started, sometimes referred to as "stock plugins".
It is highly recommended that you get comfortable with your DAW's stock plugins since they will often have the most online tutorials. That said, not all DAWs come with a sufficient suite of stock plugins and Kilohearts Essentials offers a pretty extensive set that should fill any gaps.
The list below will be most helpful to users who:
Dynamics plugins include compressors, limiters, and de-essers, and are generally focused on controlling how loud the audio is in various ways.
Reverb and delay add a sense of space by emulating how sound bounces off of a physical space (ie, reverberations and echoes).
Pitch correction comes in two forms; it either ensures the audio doesn't stray from a given scale, or pitch-shifts the audio to match a specific MIDI sequence. These are effectively your free Auto-Tune alternatives. Some DAWs will come with a pitch correction tool (such as Pitcher in FL Studio).
Distortion covers a wide variety of processes that modify a sound.
Doublers and Stereoizers are used to create multiple vocal layers from the same original waveform, usually by duplicating the sound one or more times and offsetting the copy in some way. This can help add width to a sound and when used right will make a vocal sound "big", however it can also make a vocal sound messy and unfocused if there's no longer a strong lead voice for the listener to follow.
Vocoders take in two signals (a carrier and modulator). It analyzes the modulator frequencies, splits those into a set number of bands, and then uses those frequency bands to filter the carrier sound. The result could be described as having the frequencies of one sound with the dynamics of a second sound.
While the focus of this page is effects to be used in conjunction with SynthV Studio, it's worth mentioning Vital, as it is a very popular free alternative to Serum. If you're trying to reproduce a certain sound, you might have better luck looking for Vital presets or tutorials due to its popularity, rather than whichever synths your DAW comes with.
I've also heard good things about Surge XT, but I haven't tried it yet.
VocalShifter is a tool that allows you to analyze and modify the pitch patterns of vocal samples, export those patterns as MIDI, or copy patterns from one vocal sample to another. While not quite the same, it shares a lot of features with paid software such as Melodyne, Newtone, or Flex Pitch.