any decent shareware worth trying out for a newbie?

[steve67535]

Hello....Is there anything...freeware..shareware...worth trying out....basically what I want to do is be able to "play" vst synths...some of em do not have keyboards of there own....so being able to use a "virtual keyboard" would also help.....something like..sonbar or cubase..but open source ideally.....Something to learn on before I invest a large amount of money I guess is what I am asking for...

steve

 

[manning1]

you might want to check out ntrack at fasoft.com.
ask in the user forum. i know n track handles vst synths.
also ask on the forum at pgmusic.com. i believe powertracks has a way to do this but i dont use it as i record synth directly through sound card line inputs.

 

[johnnymegabyte]

---- Freewares ----

JAZZ++ from www.jazzware.com
Easy to use Midi Editor, nothing too fancy, but it works for me

VanBasco Karaoke Player www.vanbasco.com
Although prime purpose is karaoke player, it's a MIDI player, too and it has speed and key change, quite handy features

 

[Veej007]

audacity.sourceforge.net

 

[TimOBrien]

www.hitsquad.com ( a collection of shareware/freeware music programs)
www.kvr-vst.com ( catalogs all free and commercial plugins. Great search. )
http://audacity.sourceforge.net (free audio editor works on PC, Linux and Mac)

And YES go to www.fasoft.com for N-Track Studio...

 

[djkenseattle]

Stumbled across this.

Not sure how stable it is for Windows but a friend of mine has it on his G5 and it's actually pretty cool. It's a freebie from Computer Music Magazine and handles VSTi's nicely. I think it even comes with a couple of freebies. Here is a link.

http://www.computermusic.co.uk/about/cmuzys.asp

You do have to purchase the magazine to get a copy so it's actually not "free" but close enough.

DJ Ken