Spitfire LABS
An audio library that gives you experimental ahh vibes. The library is so vast that I just started off by downloading whatever sounded interesting to me.
They just revamped the app too. Now it looks much easier to use than the previous version. I like the green theme they are going for. And the audio samples are as High-res as ever. They can go upto 4-5 gigs. So ensure you have the right kind of storage.
I also go to profile > Content > Default Download location and change it to a custom folder that exists on my other drive so that I don’t need to download it again and again every time I switch machines. You know.
MuseScore Studio
Since I joined band back in my second year of Undergrad, I had been exposed to this rich world of musical scores. We had people in the band who arranged original music, a signature of ours being renditions of bhajans. Historically, Finale has been used for arranging. I really liked its fast (unintuitive) UI, but the key bindings, once you get used to it makes you very productive.
However some people liked MuseScore 3, which was good. But I wasn’t ready to switch. MuseScore 4 came out, but it still didn’t cut it because I could feel how sluggish it was in terms of performance.
But when Musescore 4.5 dropped, it was game changing. I think this is the biggest update MuseScore has ever received and makes it much more usable, especially when palette searching doesn’t take 2 seconds on every keystroke.