Leafcutter John takes you deeper into the strange, wonderful tool Forester

If many music tools guide you, pointing you to particular sounds and hand-holding you on the grid, then Forester blindfolds you and drops you in the gaseous sea of a far-off moon. New videos give you a leg up in figuring out just how to access all that weird goodness.

808 Day: A Guy Called Gerald presets for Roland; deal round-up

No excuses: A Guy Called Gerald is here with more presets proving Roland’s ACB emulation of the TR-808 can sound f***ing great. Plus a quick round-up of steep flash discounts for your 808 Day enjoyment.

pulu: free Novation Nocturn resurrection, Mac OS 9 livecoding, happy jams!

Miranda (aka pulu) Finnish electronic artist and livecoder, is doing the archaic things others won’t. That includes bringing your Novation Nocturn back from the dead, using ancient versions of SuperCollider on iBooks and Mac OS 9, and sharing some truly happy jams.

cables.gl, free visual programming: now open source, offline

cables.gl is a wonderful creative environment for everything the browser can do visually – interaction, motion, and 3D. And now it sports a full open source MIT license and a version you can download and use offline.

Teenage Engineering’s new Medieval drum sampler – no, not a joke

Teenage Engineering was apparently worried we’d stopped thinking they were bats*** insane. So they’re here with a fully Medieval edition of the EP-133 drum sampler/composer, complete with lute and farm animal samples and a silkscreen inspired by illuminated manuscripts.

Roland 808: sneakers, fashion, and Twitch

So-called 808 Day isn’t until later this week, but Roland has announced two upcoming collaborations already. Bingo cards out: this year it’s “New Balance shoes” and “Twitch livestream with Grandmaster Flash.” And the real news here is that 8.08 Day will kick off a big change for Twitch DJs.

Dancing “vibes” and 2 more mood-elevating freebies for Live, DAWs

As much as music making can pick you up, sometimes you need an extra injection of joy. So meet Max – a blue dancing figure you will “vĂ¯be” to your music on any Ableton Live track, free. And more freebies: a bathroom reverb for Ableton Live and a chipper chippy 12-bit polysynth for any DAW.

Isadora 4 updates the deep media tool for artists – now with remote powers

Isadora, the node-based, open-ended live performance and media tool especially loved by theater and dance, gets a major update this summer. There’s a lot in there, but the biggest is something called IzzyCast, a remote functionality that lets you run any video, audio, and data in full resolution around the world. Here’s what’s new in Izzy 4.

Moog is back: Moog Muse is the 8-voice love child of modular and Voyager

The leaks and rumors are over, and the Moog Muse is here. It looks like the next-gen Moog flagship we’ve been waiting for, combining some of the best of Voyager, modular, and Matriarch in an 8-voice polyphonic instrument.

Minimal Audio’s Ripple Phaser: taking the phaser into the deep

Ripple Phaser, the latest Minimal Audio standalone effect, breaks free of modeling vintage hardware and lets you explore varied filtering and dispersion – all the way to the extreme.