Ableton Live 12’s new Themes do look great, but is that enough choice for us obsessive DAW users, working on productions into the wee hours? Absolutely not! And so we’re grateful that Madeleine Bloom continues to do the great work of producing terrific themes, all available as free downloads.

Nervous Squirrel’s latest modules focus on adding unpredictability to gates, whether internally generated or external. And you have to love that big “disruption” knob.

There’s no reason synthesizers have to always appear in dingy industrial spaces – love those spaces as we do. Musician Andrea Chichecki has just completed the release of a three-part outdoor series of live performances on modular, and you can expect the same feeling of calm you might get from going along yourself.

You’ve seen plenty of gate sequencers and Euclidean generators. DivSkip is something different: It takes four channels of triggers and transforms them via eight different musical, performative modes. It’s a do-everything rhythmic wunderkind.

Against a backdrop of daily horror across the Levant, there are voices like Mayss from Jordan. Her video “On This Land” accompanies the compilation for Palestine I covered earlier this summer. Now is also a time to discover her far-reaching mixing and podcasting work, including conversations with David Lynch and Underground Resistance co-founder Mike Banks. And now may truly be a time for inner stillness.

Don’t just call it a Second City to Berlin: Chicago’s epic KnobCon has become a major stop on the world’s synth and modular circuit. DivKid gives us the feel of the place, and here are a few highlights of what was introduced earlier this month.

Following the death of founder Keith McMillen, his company, Keith McMillen Instruments, has announced it will continue as Muse Kinetics. They’ve also got updates on stock in the latest versions of their tools.

September 17, 2024, would have been hyper pop legend Sophie Xenon’s 38th birthday. Just over three years after her death, Google has put her in the spotlight internationally on its “Doodle” on the search engine’s homepage—hopefully a chance for folks to discover or rediscover her music, which seems more prescient than ever.

It’s generative music that can fit into a spare pocket of a backpack. Nintendo DS + CellsDS homebrew + a little Lua code hacking + Korg’s Pandora PX4D guitar multi-effects = pure bliss.

VDMX6 is the biggest update for the live Mac visual tool in over a decade. Wait, no – it’s the biggest single-day news for Mac visuals in over a decade, full stop. Metal support, TouchDesigner integration, HAP updates, and more have implications beyond VDMX6 to other live visual tools, too.