Well, New York – city that once birthed CDM – I’m back this week. Come meet in person at 343 Labs on W 23rd St. Thursday night and I’ll talk about some experimental sound design techniques with modular and how they can fit techno, all using free tools. Free workshop, free software, no gear needed.

Analog Obsession is creating some beautiful free plug-ins. And for all the various analog EQ emulations out there, here’s a unique take – combine them into a single set of easy-access “best” bands.

It’s dubbed Ukrainian Music Forces, and it’s an online event you can watch from 6PM Kyiv time. Tim Exile and Endlesss have gone full online jam and full web3 with this one, down to NFTs that fund Ukraine’s Ministry of Health. And there’s a terrific lineup of underground Ukrainian artists to catch. Details:

What good is music and music technology in moments of crisis and trauma? Beirut Synthesizer Center co-founders talk about just that – and how much it has meant to those not specializing in music as well as those who do. Now as this project grows, they’ve also had a chance to learn how to make projects effective and sustainable – lessons worth sharing in your part of the world, too.

From Yogyakarta, Indonesia comes a glitchy, powerful delay effect unlike any other. It’s a stompbox with an earthquake setting. And it’s a special collaboration – between Yogya’s engineer of sound and mayhem Andreas Siagian aka squaresolid and instrument builder and musician Wukir Suryadi of the band Senyawa.

CTM Festival in Berlin remains one of the more adventurous international music festivals on the European scene – but in case you aren’t here to enjoy it, there are more ways than ever to take it in online, for free. Of course, I’m biased – things with three-letter acronyms the first of which is ‘C’ and the last of which is ‘M’ always warm my heart. (What do you mean, it’s confusing? Bah.)

CTM Festival is here, rescheduled to May, so with it another collaborative performance laboratory – MusicMakers Hacklab. I find myself revisiting the ideas of former co-host Tad Ermitaño and “animistic technology,” perhaps now as essential a time as ever.

It’s the sound and expression of a modular synth, but you can mix it with guitar sounds and play it with the guitar techniques you already know. Here’s the latest no-extra-cost addition to MOD Devices do-it-all mobile effects boxes.

Ableton Live’s improvisatory clip- and device-based interface make the software feel like it could be as natural for visuals as it is for sound. But EboSuite 2.0’s plug-ins – some 54 of them – are the first that make the “V” side as complete as “A.”

The legendary Greek composer and electronic musician Vangelis Papathanassiou is the latest of a generation to leave us in 2022.