Free Online Resources for Musicians and Educators

Free and open-source resources for musicians, music teachers, and anyone else really. There are lots of free solutions for a variety of computing tasks online. These are some of my favorite online and open source tools and have been extremely useful to me. Most of them are free.

Music Programs and Utilities

• Reaper
  REAPER is digital audio workstation software: a complete multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing, and mastering environment.  Reaper has a 30 day trial period after which you are required to obtain a license. A non-commercial license is $60 and is a fantastic price for such a great piece of software.
• MuseScore
  MuseScore is a free cross-platform WYSIWYG music notation program that offers a cost-effective alternative to commercial programs such as Sibelius, Finale and Capella. You can print beautifully engraved sheet music or save it as PDF or MIDI file.
• Weird Metronome
  Free metronome for your computer.
• Hydrogen
  Advanced drum machine for GNU/Linux
• Audacity
  Free audio editor and recorder

Internet Browsers

I gave up using Internet Explorer for a browser when I discovered Mozilla Firefox many moons ago. Lately I have found myself using Google Chrome most of the time.

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox

Productivity

• OpenOffice.org
  Apache OpenOffice is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
• FreeMind
  Download free mind mapping software. Perfect for brainstorming!
• Mindomo
  Online mind mapping tool.
• Foxit Reader
  "The best PDF reader"

Computer Utilities

• ClamWin Antivirus
  Free anti-virus for Windows
• Spybot Search and Destroy

Graphic Design

• Gimp
  Gimp is an free open-source graphic design and image manipulation program.
• Scribus
  Open source desktop publishing.
• Inkscape
  Open-Source vector graphics editor.
• MWSnap3
  MWSnap is a small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen. (Also, if you are a windows user check out the snipping tool.)
• IrfanView
  Freeware graphic viewer for windows.

Cloud Computing

• Gmail
  Attach documents and files to an email for storage.
• Google Drive (Google Docs)
• DropBox
  Free online storage for files.
• Amazon Cloud Drive
• SugarSync
  Free, secure cloud storage.

Blogging and Web Design

• Blogger
  Free blogging platform. I used to use a self-installed version of Wordpress.org (I don't like Wordpress.com) until I didn't pay my 1&1 internet hosting bill! No big loss, but with blogger I don't have to worry about it going down and use it in conjunction with other free services on the internet.
• Photobucket
  Photobucket offers image hosting, free photo sharing and video sharing.
• Wordpress.org
  Powerful and free blogging/website building software.
• 1&1
  I used 1&1 to host my website for years. Simple, easy, cheap.
• FileZilla
  Free FTP solution
• Kompozer
  KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing.
• SoundCloud
  Create, record and share the sounds you create anywhere to friends, family and the world with SoundCloud, the world's largest community of sound creators.
• BandCamp
  Bandcamp helps artists sell their music and merch directly to their fans, and helps fans discover new music and directly support those who make it.
• MixCloud

If that isn't enough, here's even more: OPEN SOURCE GOD: 480+ Open Source Applications

More about how I use these tools in conjunction later. Care to share some of your favorite online resources? Leave a comment below!