Free, open-source alternatives to FL Studio

FL Studio is a music production app built around patterns: you program drums and melodies, write parts in a piano roll, arrange the patterns into a song and finish it in a mixer, mostly with the instruments and effects it ships with. The open-source apps below share that pattern-first way of making tracks.

LMMS follows the same model closely, with a pattern editor for beats, a piano roll, bundled synthesizers and sample playback, and an effects mixer; it is aimed at composing with software instruments rather than recording live audio. Stargate is also pattern-based and leans towards electronic music, but it adds audio input recording, a wave editor and flexible track routing, while keeping to its own set of instruments and effects.