Woodshed

Free & open source · macOS · v0.4

All the pedals. None of the receipts.

Woodshed is a free recording studio for Mac with a full guitar rig inside: 93 effects, amps and cabinets, 219 presets, and everything you need to record, write and mix a song.

Get it on GitHub View the source

No account, no trial, no paid sound packs. Apple silicon and Intel, macOS 12 or later.

Go on, stomp one. They're free.

Woodshed's arrange window: four recorded guitar tracks above a ten-pedal board running into an amp head and speaker cabinet.

The effects

93 ways to ruin a clean tone.

Every effect is modelled from scratch and has to pass a bench test against a real guitar recording before it ships. Chain as many as you like. Press any of them.

HUSH noise gate Pick a pedal to read what it does.

Plus 8 amps and 3 speaker cabinets

    The studio

    Then record the riff.

    Woodshed started as a pedalboard and grew into a full studio. Tracks, takes, 19 instruments, a drummer, a mixer and mastering, all in the same app.

    Record

    • Audio tracks through the rig, or straight in for vocals
    • Cycle recording into take folders, with swipe comping
    • Autopunch, count-in, click and latency-compensated takes
    • Loop Grid for launching loops and scenes in time

    Write

    • 19 instruments with 117 sounds, plus a multi-zone sampler
    • Piano roll, score editor and step sequencer
    • A Drummer that plays grooves in 16 styles
    • Audio Unit and VST3 plug-ins, MIDI keyboards

    Mix

    • Mixer with sends, aux buses, groups and VCAs
    • Automation for every knob in the app
    • Mastering assistant with loudness metering
    • Bounce to WAV, AIFF or FLAC, or every track as a stem

    I have an electric guitar, but I didn't have the money for the pedals, amps and cabinets that make it sound like the records I love. A single good pedal can cost a hundred dollars or more, and a real amp and a full pedalboard cost thousands. So I wanted an app where I could make any kind of pedal I could think of, chain as many as I want, and run them through any amp.

    That's how Woodshed started: a pedalboard on my laptop. Once I could get the tone, I wanted to record with it and write songs around it, so it grew into a full studio. Music shouldn't sit behind a paywall, so all of it is free.

    William Gerstung, who built Woodshed

    Plug in and play.

    You need an electric guitar, a USB audio interface and a pair of headphones. Woodshed does the rest.

    Get Woodshed on GitHub

    Version 0.4 · Apple silicon and Intel · macOS 12 or later

    Windows and Linux: build it from source. The code is cross-platform and builds on every push.