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 world, with DJ Haram, Hyper Gal, Marylou, Metro Al Madina, Model/Actriz, Moor Mother, Nabihah Iqbal, Snakeskin, Yasmine Hamdan, and Ziad Nawfal.

Cairo-born producer ABADIR is back with a four-track gut-punch of Arab rhythm, a foot-stomping, belly-activating powerhouse of an EP. True to its label, The Primitivist is neither fetishized nor repurposed: it’s Rami speaking in a native musical language that’s fully rooted and simultaneously all his own. The Primitivist by ABADIR We don’t get a lot […]

Imagine crossing vocal synthesis with a rungler, vocal circuits entangling with each other like they’re “speaking in tongues.” Or enveloped grooves that bend and twist with liquid controls, shaped with tuplets and polymeters. Creator Jelle Akkerman is launching every something plug-ins today with two new tools, Glosso and Artikulation. Here’s your guide to both.

Francisco Partners, the private equity firm, is now exiting Muse Group amid 2026’s financial maneuvers. Muse Group is the Cyprus-based conglomerate that owns the publishing giant Hal Leonard, audio editor Audacity, notation software MuseScore and StaffPad, and the online platform Ultimate Guitar.

You run up against a limitation in Ableton Live, or you’ve got a creative idea. What if you could make it happen using code? That’s the Ableton Extension SDK, out in public beta now (JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js). And just like that, we’ve got Live with handy new workflows, opening up scores, connecting to the Web, and playing games. Here’s what it means, and what it can and can’t do (so far).

Behind the headlines, there is the reality of living through war. Our friend in Kyiv, Kaximia, (part of Tembra Modular, “Let’s explore modular synthesis”) is back to talk about how music can be an outlet. The past days and hours have been horrifying, from Tyre to Odesa, so I’m grateful to Kaximia for her reflections […]

Epic layoffs in March cut deep into the audio and music teams. But there’s hope that their work will live on in Unreal Engine and MetaSounds, via what is arguably the most innovative sound work built into any game engine. Unreal Engine 5.8, now in preview, features a bunch of powerful tools for working with sound, one of the biggest sound releases yet. Here’s a look at what’s in that roadmap.

Forget any associations you may have with additive synthesis. Monomono’s Niseko takes that harmonic content and makes it accessible and expressive, via the UI or an input (including Push and MPE).

Kids today, with their 31 equal divisions of the octave. Yes, it’s the music of Nicolà Vicentino, a Renaissance theorist and composer who built his own microtonal harpsichord to accommodate his experimental tunings. But it’s not just a theoretical experiment: there is some connection to musical practice (even if Vicentino was basically making this up). Food for thought as we mess with digital tuning systems and microonality.”

Kelli Cain and Brian Crabtree are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their monome company and project this week. For anyone moved by their creations over the years, there will be no escape from the feels in this gallery — and, of course, I couldn’t resist adding some extra memories from that era.