Dennis DeSantis is known by a wide swath of the music production community as a face of education at Ableton, including the Making Music book. His new role is at the Eastman School of Music, where he’s helming their new BM in Music Creation and Technology. Let’s talk to Dennis about that program, and more broadly, how to think about music technology and education.

Now, we’ve lost Dolly Parton, which is a wake-up call to stand up for the values she stood up for—in music and in life.

Note 2.1, the iPad and iPhone app from Ableton, might not strike you as a big update. But new ways of working with Clips, Warp Markers, and a refined UI (Landscape Mode!) can make Note way more usable.

Can you really tell the difference between encoding methods? Two different kick drum emulations? 16-bit versus 24-bit? These aren’t subjective questions: you can actually test them–with science. (Science!) Here’s a site that lets you create your own ABX tests, or try some pre-built ones. Argue about other stuff instead!

What does it mean to grieve home — being away from home and actually losing home? What does it mean to express that grief in sound, and to create spaces and belong through music? Detroit-based, Beirut-raised Layan Srour asks these questions in her own work, the duo Taqsim, and in an event series called Jalasat.

It’s time for a sonic refill. David Abravanel is here with a full supply of lush arps, washes of sound, rapid-fire grooves — everything Appleblim to Posthuman to Vladislav Delay Quintet, Suzanne Ciani and a bunch more. Your mission: buy some downloads if you can spare the change, and load up some full-album listens in a player of your choice. And maybe turn off the world for a while. -Ed.

Bored with linear mixing, bland cookie-cutter rhythms, and blunt TikTok-friendly hooks? Let’s tune into Loone Berlin instead, as A Homsi from the bleeding-edge MNJM label joins with DJ Saliva.

No need to brave the Arizona heat: Glitch’n is a course in electronics that even absolute beginners can enjoy, assembling oscillators, generative beats, filters, and noise on breadboard circuits. But it also helps young people to learn crucial skills that can lead to teaching others and getting jobs. And, for that matter, it could do the same for you. Let’s have a look.

There are all these extra things you need in hardware rigs or Eurorack modular. You need to mix stuff together — and then add effects, and it’d be great to record, and you do still need to connect to your computer. Bluebox 1.5 fills out that wishlist with details that could make this an absolute must-have module or device.

Talking granular effects is like talking ice cream — it’s all about the different flavors. So look at what Minimal Audio has given us: Lucid is a pulsing purple granular multi-effect. And it’s capable of everything from bleeding-edge and ambient drones to animated, tempo-synced rhythmic sliced mayhem. It’s in control when you want it — rhythmically, and in key — and totally extreme when you want that, too.