List of music software

See also: Category:Software

Audio workstation software (DAWs)

See DAWs.

Composing software

• Alt-tuner – tuning plug-in that does adaptive tunings, on-the-fly retuning, and scale analysis by Kite Giedraitis
• Csound (→ Csound and Wikipedia: Csound).
  • Blue – composition environment and frontend for Csound with python-based scripting capabilities.
  • MicroCsound – Python-based front-end to Csound specifically geared to microtonal composition (tutorial).
  • Rationale – open-source just intonation sequencer based on Csound and Python.
• Jird – a language for writing and hearing music in just intonation using ratios to express frequencies, durations, and volumes.
• Melodyne – commercial audio software with editing and analysis functions for scales and tunings.
• Mutabor – open-source dynamic microtuner, allowing mutable and static scales and tunings using flexible language developed for musicians with GUI (tutorial).
• Nondiscrete Piano Roll – with this tool one can compose microtonal pieces in a custom JI or tempered tuning; developed by Joaquín Aldunate
• pxtone collab - a "multiplayer music editor" with pitch snapping from 7edo to 36edo (and possibly more if you edit the source code and build it yourself), free pitch and fine tuning.
• Schismata – musical composition tool in any user defined tuning. Supports polyrhythms, tuning changes in real-time, sliding notes, instrument design.
• SoundModeler – free sound modeling application. Exports audio files and Halion multisamples. The note pitch is transposed in accordance with chosen temperament (equal, Pythagorean, just or meantone 1/4 comma) in the settings.
• SuperCollider – programming language for sound, possibility of user-defined synths, no restrictions for xenharmony
• TiMidity++ (→ Wikipedia: TiMidity++)
• WereSoCool – a language for composing microtonal music
• Xenharmlib – a python music theory library for the exploration and research of microtonality, diatonic set theory, non-standard notations, and many more.

Browser-based

• Xenpaper – text-based microtonal sequencer, like a notepad. Write down musical ideas and share the link around
• forbidden-music – piano roll which is not quantized in the vertical axis, and offers a few tuning rules in the form of "snaps" to create harmony

Software instruments

• AudioKit Synth One – free iPad/iPhone touch-to-play app with customizable layout and scales, which can import scales directly from within Wilsonic.
• Chameleon – customizable MIDI controller interface that can be used to create, among other things, virtual microtonal keyboards.
• Droneo – 8-voice polyphonic droning iPhone app, defines intervals in just ratios, equal divisions of an interval, or interactively with a tone spiral. Sounds nice, too.
• Dynamic Tonality – freely available dynamic tonality synthesizers and sequencers.
• Frequency Explorer – browser-based synthesizer + sequencer with precisely-configurable musical scale and harmonic spectrum.
• GeoShred – iPad/iPhone touch-to-play app with customizable layout and scales.
• Hexagonal Keyboard Demo by Sjoerd Visscher
• Microsynth – microtonal soundfont synthesizer for macOS and Windows
• Microtonal Fabric – web-browser based microtonal music platform, a framework for building universal or customized microtonal musical keyboard instruments, microtonal experiments and computing, music study, and teaching music lessons with possible remote options
• Offtonic Microtonal Synthesizer – a JavaScript browser app that lets you play around with tunings.
• Orphion – iPad/iPhone touch-to-play app with customizable layout and scales.
• Online 19-edo keyboard
• Rational Keyboard – JI keyboard with keys that grow in size
• Sonic Pi - The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone – besides live coding, you can also record to WAV format, microtonal capabilities are provided through adding decimals to MIDI numbers.
• SunVox Modular Music Studio – modular synthesizer with pattern-based sequencer (tracker), available for desktop (free of cost) and mobile devices (for approx. $6). Changing the musical scale in SunVox (video)
• Terpstra Keyboard – cross-platform web app that allows mapping of any tuning (in Scala format) on any form of generalized hexagonal layout. Settings are stored in the address bar for easy sharing.
• ThumbJam – iPad/iPhone touch-to-play app with customizable layout and scales. It can open any .scl (Scala) files.
• Wickisynth – tuning demo synthesizer with Wicki-Hayden key layout
• Xenharmonic Keyboard – Windows-only isomorphic microtonal MIDI keyboard.

Mathematics software

• Continued Fraction Calculator
• Fraction Calculator – Android app that User:PiotrGrochowski recommends to install. Allows to do arithmetic on fractions, while not outputting a mixed fraction.
• Fraction Expression Calculator – easily do ratio arithmetic
• Least Common Denominator of Fractions (LCD) Calculator – put your JI ratios in here!
• UnTwelve Tools – UnTwelve's online tools suite, including MOS visualization, Stern-Brocot Tree visualization, and an interval calculator which does ratio and EDO continued fractions.
• Octave – free, open source equivalent to MATLAB; useful for working with matrices and much more
• Online LaTeX Equation Editor – create mathematical expressions in LaTeX format for wiki pages etc.
• Wolfram Alpha – perform a variety of intensive mathematical calculations in your browser
  • Wolfram Alpha Regular Temperament Widgets

Notation software

• abcm2ps – free, open-source, ASCII-based editor with support for some microtonal accidentals.
• Lilypond – free, open-source, outstanding notation software that produces beautiful engraving-quality output on a par with commercial applications like Sibelius.
  • Thanks to the work of Graham Breed, can use Sagittal glyphs.
  • With the Ekmelily^{[dead link]} extension, it can support several other notation styles, namely Tartini, Richter Herf/Madel and Sims
• MaxScore – a Java object for Max/MSP. It is based on Nick Didkovsky's JMSL which natively supports quarter-tone notation, but is capable of playing back microtonal music with unlimited precision. In the most recent version of MaxScore, microMaps have been implemented in the score canvas that allow the display of microtonal inflections in any kind of notation system provided that a font exists to represent those inflections. So far, microMaps for 48tet and 72tet exist. It is planned to develop an standalone editor which does not require any Max programming expertise.
• Mus2 – microtonal score editor with intonationally-correct playback. It allows the retuning of staves and import of symbols from graphics files and fonts to be used as accidentals.
  • Dorico – expensive but a leading notation software with full support with the same method as Mus2 above. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaadFpqm3-U
• MuseScore – open-source notation software. See MuseScore for the dedicated page.
  • (MuseScore 3.6) Full xenharmonic support through euwbah's XenTuner
  • (MuseScore 4) The Xentuner plugin by Keenan Pepper works through JSON files specifying tuning.
  • (MuseScore 4) The XenKit plugin works for free style JI and edos.

Software plugins (VST etc.)

See List of Microtonal Software Plugins.

Tuner software

• LINGOT for GNU/Linux – free software, universal tuner that supports Scala files
  • LINGOT for Windows – third-party port of LINGOT
• mu-tune – by euwbah, browser-based, supports all equal tunings and their subsets
• Wilckerson Ganda's Microtonal Tuner – Wilckerson Ganda's tuner for all edos and edonois

Tuning manipulation software

• ChucK – digital audio programming language by Princeton University
  • miniAudicle – development environment by Princeton University which uses ChucK
    • Superparticular samchillian – open-source tuning manipulation code built on miniAudicle, by Leon Gruenbaum and Jacob Barton (2012)
• Flora Canou's Temperament Evaluator – FloraC wrote this set of Python scripts to compute TE tunings, badnesses, optimal patent vals, etc.
• Scala (→ Scala and Wikipedia: Scala (software)) – the de facto standard software for creating, manipulating and analyzing tunings
  • Instructions for Creating Scala scl files for rank two temperaments
  • Scala Microtuners for Kontakt and SynthEdit which enable real-time scale or key change for an ensemble of soft synths by means of note events on designated midi channels
• Scalemap – drop-in microtonal note-to-frequency mapping functionality for C, C++, and Javascript
• Tune Smithy by Robert Walker
• Universal Tuning Editor – create, import, edit, convert, map to any keyboard geometry, retune in real time, etc.
• Wilsonic – an iPad/iPhone app for exploring alternative scales (see it in action: the source file 3 (YouTube video)): built on the works of Erv Wilson
• tune – explore musical tunings and create synthesizer tuning files for microtonal scales

Browser-based

• Color Horizons – scale generator and synthesizer by Jon Lervold
• Edjiruler v0.0.1 – visualize JI intervals close to equal divisions of whole numbers
• Mike Battaglia's Harmonic Entropy Calculator – interactive harmonic entropy curves.
• Jeremiah Goyette's Music Calculators
• JI Scale Interval Calculator – shows a list of all JI intervals in your JI scale
• MOSedo – mos in equal divisions of the octave calculator
• Music Maker Calculator – collection of small xenharmonic calculator gadgets by Ambient Esoterica
• Online H-System Calculators – Hunt Intonation Quality Grade Point Average (IQGPA) Calculator
• Projective Tuning Space Interactive Application
• Scala2MTS – Scala file to MIDI Tuning Standard SysEx converter, written by Olle Holmberg
• Scott Thompson's Rank 2 Regular Temperament Generator – a web app to generate rank-2 regular temperaments
• Scale Workshop – scale-creation site by Lumi Pakkanen. Allows playing via QWERTY computer keyboard. Can also export .scl and .kbm files.
  • Legacy version
• Seng Piel's Audio Cents to Ratio Calculator (also converts to other units too)
  • Also, another one with extensive instructions
• Temperament Calculator by Sintel
• The Sound of Color – listen to the sonification of colors as pitches transposed to the audible range and of color pairs as intervals
• Tonespiral – listen to harmonics visualized as a spiral
• Uniform mapper – finds uniform maps corresponding to integer and noninteger edos
• Untwelve.org animated mos ring demo
• Untwelve.org interval calculator – online interval calculator tool, shows linear fraction and edo fraction expansions, too
• x31eq Temperament Finder by Graham Breed
• Xen-calc – interval calculator that translates to/from ratios, cents, FJS and color notation, much more too.
• Xenharmonic Wiki interval calculator – online interval calculator tool, shows linear fraction and EDO fraction expansions, too
• XeTune – tuning manipulation web app by John Valentine

Desmos.com

• Basic waveforms – sine wave harmonics
• Cent error of 3 harmonics
• Cents to JI
• Commas generalized clean
• Compare harmonics to edos
• Diatonic Scale Explorer – visualize the diatonic scale with different sizes of fifths
• Octave harmonics proximity to edo (circle)
• Octave intervals
• Patent val monzo mappings
• Pitch circle
• Rank-1 temperaments close to specific JI
• Temps within ed#
• Visualization of isomorphic key mappings
• What edos have generator sizes/interval ranges
• Zeta in Desmos

Scratch.mit.edu

• Number To Fractions – finds fractions to a number that improve over the previous. Allows restricting to 3–limit, 5–limit, 7–limit, 11–limit or 13–limit. Type a number to be approximated by JI ratios, or the binary logarithm of a ratio to be approximated by edo intervals.
• Selected just intervals by error
  • MediaWiki output
• Table of edo intervals
• Tempered out comma finder
• Tempering out edo finder

Discontinued and broken software

• Custom Scale Editor – at one time the most widely used tuining app after Scala, replaced by Universal Tuning Editor
• Fast Decimal to Fraction Approximations^{[dead link]}
• Microtone^{[dead link]} – HTML5 uniform keyboard demo with any equal temperament
• [1]^{[dead link]}
  • ET Scale Tree Playground^{[dead link]}
• Monochord^{[dead link]} – try out just intervals from a base frequency.
• spiral^{[dead link]} – listen to harmonics 1-16 visualized as a spiral
  • Scala (SCL) to TUN and MTS online converter^{[dead link]}
• Vine^{[dead link]} – an interface for just intonation, with a color-coded lattice.
• Tonescape – music composition, analysis and educational tool by Joseph Monzo, intended primarily for composition but also effective for tuning manipulation. Broken due to being very old software.