Anvil Studio

By being able to craft just about every element of the song, including lyrics and multiple instrumental layers, Anvil Studio makes it almost too easy to compose songs. Its interface isn’t very attractive, but with great user guidance and a wealth of features, it’s an awesome app for any musician.

Despite being loaded with features, this program downloads really quickly and is light by most standards. Anvil Studio has a great tutorial that opens when you get inside. It’s helpful for finding all of the program’s cool features, but it doesn’t make you click through endless pages before you can get started. Starting your composition is as easy as clicking a few notes on the keyboard. Once they’re on the staff, you can move them, draw lyrics over them and even make them harmonize with other notes. There are more than 40 instruments to use and each one can be layered over other sounds so you can get a better idea of what the finished product will sound like. If you don’t know a ton about music theory, you might feel a little overwhelmed at the amount of options. Though the program’s interface is stuck in the XP era, it makes it easy to surf through the vast number of features and tweaks this program offers.

Having more features than you can use in a sitting is a really good problem to have. No matter what your level of expertise, Anvil Studio offers a wonderful tool to help you compose music. It’s a great learning resource, as well.