Lloyd's Music Tools: Free Online Music Tools and VST Plugins
Lloyd's Music Tools is a set of six free tools for making music and promoting it: an online TR-808 drum machine with WAV, stem and MIDI export, two VST3 plugins for laser and zap sounds, a vinyl video maker for Instagram, Reels and TikTok, a lyric writing tool based on the cut-up technique David Bowie used, and a Commodore 64 in the browser with SID music software. No account, no payment, no watermark. Four of them run in the browser; the two plugins are downloads.
6 tools
4 in the browser
2 VST3 downloads
0 accounts
Updated
I am Lloyd Stellar, an electro producer and software developer from Hilversum. I make electro, a genre that lives on the TR-808, laser zaps and vocoders, so those are the tools I ended up building. Everything here is built the way I like the internet: free, no login, nothing to hand over.
Which tool do you need?
If you came here with a job in mind, this table points you to the right tool.
Lloyd's Online TR-808 Drum Machine A free online drum machine, no download
The online TR-808 is a drum machine in your browser with the layout of the Roland original: 14 drum tracks from bass drum to cowbell, an accent row, 16, 32 or 64 steps, tempo from 50 to 200 BPM and swing. The sounds are 322 samples of a real TR-808, in a clean version and two saturated ones. Nine electro artists programmed a pattern for it, among them Anthony Rother, Legowelt, Carl Finlow and The Exaltics, so you can load a real pattern and take it apart.
When the beat is done you take it with you: record the live performance to WAV, export every track as a separate 64-step loop, or export the pattern as a MIDI file for Ableton's 808 Core, the Behringer RD-8, Roland TR-08, AcidLab Miami or Elicktronic Yocto. Patterns save as a small file on your own computer. There is undo and redo, the space bar starts and stops, and a manual explains every knob.
Runs on desktop and tablet in landscape, any modern browser
Export WAV recording, stems per track, MIDI, pattern file
Sounds 322 samples of a real TR-808, nine artist patterns
Lloyd's Lasers VST3 Plugin Free laser sound effects for Windows and macOS
Lloyd's Lasers is a VST3 effect plugin that puts laser-inspired modulation on whatever you run through it. It was made for electro, where a laser zap on a snare or a lead is part of the vocabulary, but it works on any source that needs some science fiction. The parameters are open, so a subtle shimmer and a full ray gun are both in there.
Version 0.2 is a free download of 38 MB with an installer for Windows (.exe) and one for macOS (.dmg). It loads in any 64-bit DAW that hosts VST3, such as Ableton Live, FL Studio or Logic Pro.
Lloyd Stellar: More Lasers Free laser and zap sound generator, Windows
More Lasers does one thing: it generates laser and zap sounds from scratch. You start with a pitch sweep and set its curve and speed, then push it through a resonant comb filter that overdrives into harsh metal when you want it to, a low-pass filter with key tracking, and a sub oscillator for weight. Chorus, delay and reverb are built in, so the zap is finished inside the plugin.
It is a VST3 instrument for Windows only (I build and test on Windows and own no Apple hardware). Version 1.0 is a 3.5 MB download: unpack the zip, copy the .vst3 folder into your VST3 folder and rescan in your DAW.
Runs on Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit VST3 hosts
Engine pitch sweep, comb filter with overdrive, low-pass, sub oscillator, drive
Lloyd's Spin Doctor Free vinyl video maker for Reels, TikTok and Instagram
Spin Doctor turns a release into a spinning record video. Drop in the cover, drop in the track, pick the 5 to 30 seconds you want people to hear, and the cover becomes the label of a vinyl record that spins in the frame. You choose the format (square for the feed, vertical for Stories, Reels and TikTok, portrait 4:5), the background colour or a blurred cover, the vinyl finish (black, a solid colour, splatter or marble), the speed, and a text line with the artist, the title and a badge such as OUT NOW or the release date.
The preview updates with every change. The export is an MP4 at 1080 pixels wide, 30 frames per second, with the audio in sync and a beat pulse if you want the record to move with the kick. Release mode takes up to 8 tracks and makes one 30-second video per track in one go.
Bowie Lyrics Cutter A free lyric writing tool for when the words will not come
The Bowie Lyrics Cutter is a lyric writing tool for writer's block. It uses the cut-up technique: David Bowie cut his own lines into pieces with scissors for Diamond Dogs and later let a program called the Verbasizer do the cutting. Here you put a text on the bench (a public domain poem from the built-in library of 528, the opening of a random Wikipedia article, the Apollo 11 radio transcript, your own notes, or a TXT, PDF or DOCX file), choose how fine the blade cuts, and get a tray full of paper strips with short phrases.
Then you shuffle, deal a line, and drag strips onto the cutting mat until a lyric appears that you would never have written in a straight line. The tool does not write for you: it only cuts what you give it and lets you move the pieces. Export the result as text or as a picture of the mat, or save the whole bench as a project file. Everything stays in your browser.
Runs on desktop and phone (held sideways)
Sources 528 poems, Wikipedia, Apollo 11, your own text, TXT, PDF, DOCX
Lloyd's Online Commodore 64 A free C64 emulator in the browser, with SID music software loaded
The online Commodore 64 is a real C64 emulator (VICE, running through EmulatorJS) shown on a Commodore 1702 monitor in a 1980s bedroom. It starts with SID-Wizard 1.93, a tracker for the SID sound chip, so you can write chiptune the way it was done on the machine. The Music Shop and Music Machine are on the shelf too, next to three games by Legowelt and a handful of demos.
Each program comes with a keyboard reference, because the C64 keyboard did things your keyboard does not. You can save states, and you can drag a .d64 or .prg from your own collection onto the screen to run it. A physical keyboard is required, so this one is for laptops and desktops.
Runs on desktop with a keyboard, any modern browser
Loaded SID-Wizard, The Music Shop, Music Machine, Legowelt games, demos
Your own drag and drop .d64, .prg and other C64 files
Everything is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, no frameworks, no app store, and the plugins are native VST3. Here is what you can expect from every tool on this page.
Free, and staying free
No price, no trial, no watermark, no premium tier, no newsletter popup. The tools are here because I like building them, and because some of you might like my music afterwards.
No account
Nothing to sign up for. Settings and work in progress live in your own browser or in a file on your own computer.
Your files stay yours
The Lyrics Cutter reads your files inside the browser and uploads nothing. The TR-808 saves patterns to your computer. Spin Doctor sends the rendered frames to this server only to encode the MP4, and keeps nothing.
Browser or download
The TR-808, Spin Doctor, the Lyrics Cutter and the C64 run in the browser. Lloyd's Lasers and More Lasers are VST3 plugins you download and load in your DAW.
Desktop first, phone where it makes sense
Spin Doctor and the Lyrics Cutter work on a phone. The TR-808 wants a landscape screen and the C64 wants a real keyboard. The plugins need a DAW.
Made by a producer
I make electro and I build software. The tools come from the things I need around a drum machine, a synth and a release: a beat, a zap, a video, a lyric.
Why I give these tools away
I miss the internet of the 1990s, when almost everything was free, nobody asked you to log in, and nobody collected your data. This website is my attempt to keep that alive, and the tools are part of it. I am a system administrator and software developer by trade, and I have always loved open source software for the same reason. So the drum machine, the plugins, the video maker and the lyric tool cost nothing and ask for nothing.
My own music works the same way: the latest EP is free on Bandcamp, and about a quarter of the people who download it pay something anyway. If a tool here saves you an afternoon, the best thanks is to listen to a track or to tell another producer. There is also an easter egg: the LLOYDOS terminal behind the TERMINAL_ button in the status bar, with a few commands that do nothing useful at all.
Frequently asked questions
Are the tools in Lloyd's Music Tools free?
Yes. All six tools are free, with no account, no trial period, no watermark and no premium tier. The two VST3 plugins are free downloads, the other four run in your browser.
Do I need to create an account?
No. None of the tools has a login. Settings and work in progress are kept in your own browser: the Lyrics Cutter autosaves your bench, the drum machine saves patterns as a file on your computer.
Can I use what I make in my own music and videos?
Yes. Beats, stems and MIDI from the TR-808 are yours to use in your own tracks (the raw samples may not be redistributed on their own, see the terms), lyrics from the cutter are yours, and the Spin Doctor video is yours to post. Sounds you make with the Lasers plugins belong to you.
Do the plugins work on macOS?
Lloyd's Lasers works on Windows and macOS and comes with an .exe and a .dmg installer. More Lasers is Windows only, because I build and test on Windows and do not own Apple hardware. Both are VST3 plugins for 64-bit hosts such as Ableton Live, FL Studio, Bitwig or Logic Pro (Lasers only).
Which tools work on a phone?
Spin Doctor and the Bowie Lyrics Cutter work on a phone (the cutter wants the phone held sideways). The TR-808 needs a landscape screen of at least 1024 pixels, so use a laptop or a tablet on its side. The Commodore 64 needs a physical keyboard. The plugins run inside a desktop DAW.
What happens to the files I upload?
The Lyrics Cutter reads TXT, PDF and DOCX files inside your browser and never uploads them. The TR-808 keeps patterns on your computer. Spin Doctor renders the video frames in your browser and sends them to this server only to encode the MP4, which is returned to you and not kept. The Commodore 64 loads your own disk images in the browser.
Free games on Lloyd Stellar's Homepage
Done working? Lloyd's Future Arcade has five free retro games with a worldwide hall of fame: a 2048 puzzle against a rogue AI, Tetris-style blocks in a Eurorack case, a Suika-style merge game, 1982 Space Invaders and a rhythm game played on the TR-808 above. And if you want to hear what all this gear is for, my music is on Bandcamp.
