Techno is just one angle – the lifeblood of music between Detroit and Berlin is a relentless underground drive that hustles harder. If you need some of that mojo now, here’s both a pay-what-you-will compilation and a free soundpack with the likes of Tyree Cooper, Sarah Kivi, and Eric D. Clark.

It’s next-level chaos – literally. The radical sonic exploration of the original Softpop by Peter Edwards and Bastl has been massively expanded into a new modular analog synth and sound processor. In a chaotic universe, here’s the kind of unpredictability you want to swallow whole — rather than the other way around.

It’s a simple pitch to Windows and Linux users: so long as you have a compatible RTX GPU to render, NVIDIA is going to throw an insane amount of stuff at you for free to create and collaborate. That landscape is growing – and it’s now out of beta.

Ableton Live turned 20 in October, and it goes without saying it’s had a profound impact on music making in intervening years. But want to really see how it’s evolved? Here are screenshots, dated reviews, and even retro installs as proof.

Latvian legends Erica Synth are teaming up with German DIY electronics personality Moritz Klein for a 9-kit modular monosynth project. The first module is out now.

Sometimes the way out of darkness is hitting play – to reach deeper feelings in a way only music can. The challenge can be just getting the track queued. All due respect to algorithms, half the joy of doing that is finding someone you trust.

FL Studio users got a nice solstice gift – lots of new features, covered in their lifetime updates plan.

It’s not an exaggeration to say iZotope defined the modern distortion plug-in with Trash. Grabbing the deep, expansive Trash 2 plug-in for free is a no-brainer.

In a huge boon to coders and hackers, Resolume’s Arena, Avenue, and even modular Wires now all can be accessed as web servers. Want your smartphone to be able to dial into that visual creation? Now it’s easy.

It’s a way of going truly off the grid – MIDI Tape Recorder captures and recalls performances as sample-accurate, like tape. It’s free for Mac and iOS now, from developer Geert Bevin / Uwyn.