Here's another live visual icon with some welcome updates. Vidvox promised lots of quality-of-life refinements with VDMX6 as a platform, and VDMX6.3 adds just that. So it's a good excuse to mention VDMX again, in case you'd tuned out for a bit. The post VDMX 6.3 adds expressions,…

The news can be numbing in all its violence and mindlessness, compounded by a chorus of shills across media and social media. Temp-Illusion, the duo formed in Tehran by Shahin Entezami and Behrang Najafi, cuts through those feelings like a knife. Then stick around for the deeply…

Sinevibes has been cheering on KORG gear as much as KORG themselves. Now they're bringing the entire range of 20+ effects to prologue, minilogue xd, NTS-1, NTS-1 mkII, NTS-3, and microKORG2 -- plus you get major sonic updates for the Eternal flanger and Shift frequency shifter. T…

MID continues to make cool stuff for Ableton Live, with a special emphasis on Ableton Move. Ever wished you could quickly chop up a track or other longer material into bar-aligned loops -- especially for easy triggering on Move? Move Loop Slicer does just that, and it's free now.…

Native Instruments, iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx being part of inMusic? That was early May; now only NI remains at inMusic. 2026' mergers and acquisitions have come so fast, you practically need a reference to keep up. So... let's do just that. It's part of a larger pa…

35 years later, the T-1000 is more relevant than ever. Terminator 2 debuted in the first weekend of July 1991. The groundbreaking mix of computer animation and practical effects has come full circle. And I can’t mention the T-1000 without mentioning Alan Oldham (DJ T-1000.) T-100…

Finally, proof that there's life for Live after Apple and Microsoft. It's unofficial and totally unsupported, but a set of patches for the free Wine compatibility environment lets you run Ableton Live 12, Max for Live, and Push 2 and Push 3 on Linux. And the result is just about…

Novation's Launchkey remains a go-to, no-hassle standard for MIDI controllers. Now they've rounded out their MK4 lineup with an 88-key model that adds the extra octaves without the weight or bulk that usually entails. They opted for semi-weighted keys to keep from bulking up.) It…

Isadora for macOS and Windows has long been a powerful media art tool for those in the know, thanks to its intuitive interface and focus on live performance. It's the media art tool that can feel at home with dance choreographers, a rare piece of software that gets dramaturgy. Is…

Apple's Logic Pro for macOS and iOS just got some powerful new granular features for Alchemy and Sample Alchemy, plus new modes for the sequenced slicer/effect Beat Breaker. Once you do know where to find the new features, it opens up major sound design possibilities. The post Lo…

Capital and private equity continue to fly in the music and music tech industries. CVC has acquired a majority stake in the music distribution giant DistroKid, with Insight VC keeping a significant share. The post CVC private equity now has a majority stake in DistroKid, music di…

For my semi-regular program POST for Refuge Worldwide this week, I focused on new releases. This highlighted Lebanon in particular and still didn't cover the flurry of releases there, but it covered other places, too. It's all recommended, so here's the full playback and track li…

EPROM, the West Coast experimental bass and production legend, meets Minimal Audio’s Current with Memory Rites. Here’s a guide to exploring those sounds, whether the full flagship synth or the new Current Expansion Player. The post EPROM built an instrument for Current: complete…

School's out for summer. But Ableton's getting ready for back-to-school, soft-launching Ableton Learn with lessons for starting from the beginning with music and production. And there's a twist: its interactive features are powered by the same engine that Ableton Move and Note us…

You wake up. It’s the year 2003. Some upstart software developer called Audio Damage wants to let you patch a combo filter-delay however you like, including ways that will break your ears. Ronin is reborn as ShinRonin, from a time when software developers let you run with scissor…

Yeah, it's time for July-full moon in Capricorn-GAS shopping guide round-up. Ramageddon may have come for your game consoles and computers, but for now, your synths and drum machines and software have some discounts! Phew. The post It’s a terrible time to buy memory, but a great…

Kees Tazelaar's On the Threshold of Beauty is a wonderful plunge into the history of electronic music in the Netherlands, 1925-1965, including the Philips Pavilion and the World's Fair, but a whole lot more. It's free to download now -- the perfect beach book if you're a total ne…

iZotope is now coming to rest post-Native Instruments as the music software maker is acquired by Boris FX. And when they say founder-owned, they mean it: the guy's name is actually Boris (Yamnitsky). The pairing frankly makes more sense than either NI/Soundwide or inMusic. It mak…

Korg's NTS-3 is an absolute joy -- a cute, pocket-sized, inexpensive kit that you can load up with custom effects. But that gets even more interesting once you add Sinevibes' library of effects. And now you get one especially created for the X/Y pad. I've been testing a prereleas…

Using your iPhone (or iPad) as a camera continues to get easier and more flexible. Blackmagic Camera and Apple's own Final Cut Camera each got significant updates recently. Apple wins here either way, but the Blackmagic app in particular opens up a lot of options, including with…

Timed with the release of Clairvoyant Dimensions, his new album with saxophonist Jeff Hollie, the JuJu & Jordash and Magic Mountain High mainstay talked at length about pressing record and jamming, the lesser-known synths behind the album’s shimmer, and the hilarious origin of th…

Long before anyone was teetotaling screen time like it was some kind of vice, we once stared into our displays for no reason at all, as long as possible. Friends, I'm here to tell you that that dream is alive, and everything from your latest smartphone to computer to flat panel T…

D16's kick plug-in PunchBox was already a legendary drum weapons development laboratory, full of layers of crunchy, cruel, wonderful sounds. The Polish developer isn't messing with that formula, but they've packed more than just a few extras into the long-awaited V2 update. It's…

It's a portal into a wonderland of retro-inspired gear, all in Reason. Sweden's own Erik Karl Stephan Söderberg built EKSS as a one-man passion project, building Rack Extensions that ooze personality—that boutique hardware feeling, but all in the box. Come with me down the rabbit…

Our friends from Venezuela are facing a horrific reality. Wednesday night, the country was hit by two back-to-back earthquakes, each among the strongest in a century. As I write this, the official confirmed death toll is well over 200 and rising, with thousands injured and many m…

We live in dissonant, uncertain times, and maybe our consciousness struggles if we try to make it fit square corners and easy forms. So now is a perfect time to feature long-time favorite label Facade Electronics out of northern Mexico. Their opening releases of the year, from ar…

I missed this when it dropped earlier this month -- Synthtopia was there! But now is a perfect time to chill out to the smoothly gliding sounds of this original Trautonium-inspired synthesizer design in progress. Flexur can cool down an overheated Europe. The post Flexur and Chil…

Sleepwalking? Unexplained seizures? Neighbors have a rodent and plague problem? Don't worry, and don't be spooked by what some nuns told you! You just need the handheld, open-source Scaepe - Noiseferatu DIY kit! The post Noiseferatu: open-source, 45 algorithms, like a KAOSS Pad f…

This has to be peak 2026 music tech. Across every feed, producers I follow are posting the same revelation: they’re finding their own music in training sets used by AI. Investigations by Alex Reisner at The Atlantic are making this more visible — and visceral. And the findings ar…

Juneteenth is about emancipation, and it's expressed in musical joy across the USA today. Here are our friends from Black Techno Matters with their community calendar of events today -- one might be near you -- plus two recent releases you should hear wherever you are. The post J…

Your sequencing gets upgraded -- including cameos by Pac-Man and the LOGO turtle. You get even more secret weapons for drum synthesis. You get the hot new RANDOM8 collab from Befaco and Mylar Melodies, cloning their new hardware. There's just so much goodness in VCV Rack that cov…

"I'm not particularly interested in typing prompts to make stuff, I'm interested in breaking them and dissecting them," writes Jasper Shuoyang Zheng as he introduces Latent Terrain. Now using an intuitive, elegantly designed open-source Max external and UI, you can play the weird…

Following GForce's official renditions of Oberheim instruments, now we're treated to an official Sequential synth in plug-in form. This Prophet-5 combines painstaking recreations of the various revisions with new features like MPE, a dual-layer architecture, and lush effects. I'v…

The most exciting add-on for Ableton Live this spring for me is actually not an Ableton Extension. It's warpradius, a Max for Live device by Jon Doe One that transforms the entire grid into a single expressive percussion surface. It employs a Bessel membrane resonator model, a mo…

The Ableton Extension SDK has only just been launched to the public, but there are already plenty of useful and fun Extensions to try right away. And that means even before you try hand-coding or vibe-coding your own, you might already find a reason to grab the beta and start ext…

You press a button to set it in motion, and from there, it's anyone's guess. The screen just makes glitchy patterns at you. The knobs and buttons do... something. Pressing the screen resets. But once it's connected, the AW noise maker opens a wormhole to warped realms of sound. T…

It's the absolute opposite of "AI" as you've seen it. There's no online connection, no giant data set. And here, neural nets help you to escape generic presets and defaults -- not lead you into them. The new PhenoType for Sonic Charge Synplant will help you precisely define the e…

At attention! Unfiltered Audio has taken their deep drum synth and favorite effects and remade them as VCV Rack modules. This is instabuy territory ($10-20 a la carte or an intro pricing of $30 for the set, compatible with the free Rack). The post Unfiltered Audio Battalion drum…

It's a tragic contradiction: as Lebanon's state of emergency worsens, support wanes. That means it's time for updates on Lebanese-organized music efforts we've covered, plus a new call to action. Today, you can tune in and support a 12-hour fundraiser bridging Beirut and the worl…