SonicSketch DAW interface with audio controls, post-processing for image, and audio effects. In the center, the Indaw Anticline visualized seismic data, with a waveform puck in red moving across a teal path through the black and white image.

Live out your Xenakis fantasies, free in your browser, with SonicSketch

JeongHo Park, a self-described “algorithmic composer” and artist, is building a delightful instrument that turns images into scores with full drawing capability for making paths. Inspired by the likes of Xenakis’ UPIC, the tool gives you instantly mind-bending results, living in that netherworld between synthesizer and score.

Lorenzo Colombo in live session, framed by speaker stacks, equipment from Torso and Soma on the table and metal percussive plates suspended behind him and on tables, as he strikes one plate with a hammer.

Dream with this: solenoids, percussion, and circuits in live Torso session

Here’s a perfect way to treat your ears at the start of the week. Sound artist and percussionist Lorenzo Colombo recorded this ethereal, cosmic live set at Torso Electronics in Copenhagen. The dadamachines automat toolkit and its mechanical possibilities get woven together with Torso’s T1 and S4 hardware, and the results are pure magic.

Modor DR-2 – a delicious, overlooked drum machine – adds trig conditions

Massive sound, lots of unique tricks, hard-hitting personality, onboard basslines — more people should be talking about the Modor DR-2. And amidst the blizzard of news last month, you might have missed that it now does trig conditions. OS014 landed at the end of December, so we may have missed it while we were all […]

Pikimov, free Web visual tool, now has a classic editor for video editing

Pikimov, the community-supported free Web visual tool, keeps getting better. Pikimov 5 dropped today with a “classic” editor that makes it competitive with tools like CapCut — or any time you need a quick video edit. That joins After Effects-style motion tools, with surprising options like background removal and rotoscoping.

King Britt shares a Moog-filled Black History Month music playlist

You’ve got to feed yourself — that goes for music just like everything else. So your ears don’t just want this playlist from King Britt and Moog. They need this playlist. And you can bet, given King’s incredible Blacktronika project, those ears will be fully satisfied.

Best of show: walk NAMM with us in a gear-mas gallery

Who stood out at this year’s NAMM show, that festivus of gear that brightens our winters from Anaheim? We’ve given you some idea with NAMM and LA’s Buchla & Friends. Here, in images, are our favorites from NAMM, as captured by LA photographer Mehdi Hassine and veteran Berlin hardware guru Gösta Wellmer.

Resolume 7.24 adds 10-bit color, more — plus a bunch of new tutorials

Visualist workhorse Resolume continues its rapid update cadence. New in 7.24: 10-bit color output, performance optimizations, improved capture device support, new CRT effect, new Wire nodes, Wire usability improvements, and more. Plus, the Resolume crew has uploaded a number of tutorials you should check out.

Ukraine’s Tembra Modular continues workshops, gear despite attacks

Through blackouts, bitter cold, Internet disruptions, and nightly attacks, Ukrainian DIY producers Tembra Modular persist. The two-person shop continues to run workshops and produce DIY kits and assembled modules. Blackouts can’t stop them: their production often takes place literally by candlelight. Here’s Kaximia to tell us the story of their modular synth resistance, and why you should be conscious in your choice of what hardware you use.

Soundbites: the music inventions of NAMM, Buchla and Friends

Gear-mas comes but once a year. But with swirling doom and gloom, just how is the world of making musical instruments? We sent Nadia Says, along with Burak Yerebakan, Portrait XO, Franck Martin, and Mehdi Hassine to find out, at the mighty NAMM show in Anaheim — and the indie Buchla & Friends in LA, too. Here’s the show viewed through artists and makers alike, one portrait at a time.

Cosmolab, open DSP development kit, in final hours of crowdfunding

Italy’s Faselunare have done lots of great stuff over the years, and they’re entering the final hours of crowdfunding for Cosmolab, a powerful modular DSP kit powered by Electrosmith’s Daisy Seed. Let’s have a quick look. There are a number of these ideas, and with good reason — choice is at the heart of why […]