Chicken and egg problem, no more. MIDI Polyphonic Expression is now in commonly available controller hardware and software like Ableton Live 11. So let’s check in at the synth maker of the father of MIDI – Dave Smith’s house Sequential and see what happens when you add it to classic synthesizers.

When you feel like you’re out of ideas, when you’ve obsessed over that edit and that knob, when your mood has gone south… it’s time to stop everything and jam. January doldrums, meet Jamuary bliss.

Let’s give New Year’s Day one more try. Over three hours of live-streamed pristine ambient delicacy from rising star KMRU should fit the bill. Immerse yourself, and then if you feel the need to make your own sounds, catch a workshop or other inspiration, too.

We all need a way to center, a way to lower our blood pressure and cure insomnia. Forget ASMR or videos of ocean waves or whatever. Just watch these mesmerizing videos of tiny, tiny, tiny accurate models of classic synthesizers.

Lying somewhere between organic and artificial in its sound, the vocal synth Pipa – available as both an iPad app and a Mac and Windows plug-in – is genuinely new and refreshing.

It really sounds like we want our drums to beat us up. Anyway, Diablo Lite, a new free plug-in from Cymatics, is all about harder-hitting drums – and it in fact is some nice boutique software.

“This stompbox provides some of the most over-the-top, insane distortion tones in the world” – or, you know, some people are insanely over-the-top distorted enough to think it’ll be inside a vaccine.

When you can’t necessarily make sense of time, but feel the need to mark its passage, there is the entire discipline of music. David Abravanel returns for year-end Pairing Mode picks and words on why you should give them deep listening.

The wonderfully mysterious analog LYRA-8 synthesizer world now has an unofficial digital cousin – and it’s free-or-pay-what-you-can for Pure Data (and cross-platform AU and VST).

In dark moments, sometimes the most vital gesture is acknowledging uncertainty and feeling. So as we pass the milestone of one year into the next, I’ll be talking through some mixes alongside our year-end music review.