Patience, module from Olivia Artz, scales modulation from seconds to decades

Following the success of Time Machine, Olivia Artz has a new idea for playing with temporality in Eurorack modular. Patience is a “lowest” frequency oscillator, setting duration in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years … or decades. It’s just launched on Kickstarter.

Listen to three hours of “Mad” Mike Banks, plus a chat with Waajeed

Benji B did this interview in 2017, but it’s even more essential in 2026: Mike Banks talks about the meaning behind techno music, with legendary tracks mixed right in. And let’s go around the corner to hear from Wajeed and the Underground Music Academy from this summer.

MIDI Tape Recorder, precise capture, now standalone for macOS, iOS

Geert Bevin’s terrific MIDI Tape Recorder precisely captures MIDI performances, including MPE, verbatim — not the slightest variation in sound. v2.0 adds a host of new features, plus a standalone version alongside the existing AUv3 plug-in. It’s low-level, direct CoreMIDI capture of what you played, exactly as you played it, with every expression intact. And it’s and open source.

Optical analog video feedback in a massive, rotating 4K machine

It’s digitally controlled optical goodness: a humble Teensy translates analog knob turns into control of 4K displays, all built into beautiful mahogany enclosures and giant cranks. The result: elegant, precise fractals blossom out of 4K displays by literally tweaking the knobs on the units. Behold, The Light Herder!

End-of-summer sales on gear and software

US Labor Day looms. Summer days are waning. Sales are expanding. I am … barely awake because of ragweed/ambrosia pollen. It must be that time of year. Let me refocus my mind by sharing these sales with you quickly.

Playing KORG’s phase8, acoustic synth, with videos (mine and others)

KORG’s phase8, engineered by the skunkworks office in Berlin, has found some visibility. But what does it mean as an actual electroacoustic instrument? What’s it like to play? My Lemonade Stand video from Superbooth is out, along with others, so I thought I’d do some reflection

Lucinate video synth animates and live-codes visuals on Mac and iOS

From the makers of the utterly indispensable iPad app AUM (among other things), Lucinate is a real-time visual environment for macOS and iOS, based on Apple’s Metal technology. You can approach this as a ready-to-play, Ableton Link and Link Audio-enabled video synth. And when you want to hack or make your own shaders, you can live-code those, too.

Reason now offers 15 Reason devices, plus Rack Extensions access, for free

Reason Free brings some of the best of Reason to your DAW of choice, totally free. That includes instruments like the excellent Europa synth, effects like Audiomatic and Scream 4, and more. And there’s especially good news for the Rack Extensions ecosystem: the full marketplace of third-party add-ons will run in the free plug-in, too.

Dennis DeSantis on Eastman’s new degree; electronic music as instrument

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.

The Soft Pink remembers — and more Dolly Parton

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.