Open-source alternatives to Tonal

Tone.js is a web-based audio synthesizer and framework for the Web Audio API. It provides a digital signal processing toolkit, a musical timing engine, and a library for MIDI processing to create interactive music and synthesizers directly in the browser. The project features a musical timing engine that coordinates audio events and loops using BPM-relative timing and a global transport. It includes a MIDI processing library capable of converting binary MIDI files into JSON format to trigger sounds and control audio parameters in real time. Its capabilities cover polyphonic sound synthesis,

JUCE is a comprehensive C++ audio framework and digital signal processing library used to build cross-platform audio applications, audio plug-ins, and high-performance user interfaces. It serves as a development kit for creating audio processors compatible with industry-standard plugin formats for digital audio workstations, as well as a tool for MIDI and Open Sound Control communication between musical hardware and software. The framework is distinguished by its ability to maintain a single codebase for native desktop and mobile applications across multiple operating systems. It provides a f

nih-plug is an audio plugin SDK and development framework providing a set of tools and traits for processing audio and MIDI data in a real-time safe environment. It functions as a cross-format plugin wrapper, allowing a single implementation to be exported into multiple industry-standard audio plugin formats, including VST, CLAP, and LV2. The project includes a retained-mode GUI framework for creating interactive user interfaces and parameter controls for audio processors. It also provides a real-time audio library that utilizes hardware acceleration and asynchronous task management to mainta

Scribbletune is a JavaScript music composition library, MIDI file generator, text-based patch diagrammer, and Web Audio API sequencer. It enables the definition of rhythms, chords, and melodies using string-based notation for real-time playback in web browsers. The system transforms simple text notation into SVG visual representations of modular synthesizer signal paths. It also converts programmatically composed musical clips and patterns into standard MIDI files for use in external digital audio workstations. Composition capabilities include a character-based rhythmic notation system for p

Magenta is a comprehensive toolkit for training, synthesizing, and performing music through neural models and hardware-integrated engines. It functions as a machine learning framework that enables the generation, manipulation, and real-time performance of audio, providing the structural foundations for musical intelligence through hierarchical sequence modeling and symbolic processing. The project distinguishes itself by enabling real-time, low-latency neural audio synthesis that can be integrated directly into professional digital audio workstations. It supports interactive musical jamming a

Hammerspoon is a programmable automation engine for macOS that enables deep system-level control through a Lua scripting environment. By bridging high-level scripts with native Objective-C APIs, it allows users to interact with the operating system's accessibility tree, intercept hardware input streams, and manage the lifecycle of running applications. The project distinguishes itself through an event-driven architecture that registers asynchronous hooks for system notifications and hardware events. This allows for real-time automation, such as remapping keyboard and mouse inputs, managing wi

Muzic is a deep learning platform and framework for AI-driven music analysis, composition, and synthesis. It functions as a music generation framework and analysis tool, utilizing large language models and autonomous agents to orchestrate the creation and interpretation of symbolic and audio music. The project is distinguished by its cross-modal capabilities, mapping natural language and symbolic music into a shared joint embedding space for zero-shot classification and information retrieval. It employs a variety of specialized architectures, including diffusion frameworks for audio synthesis