Let’s put all the gear news aside and consider – people are doing wonderful things with sound live. Consider the duo of Giant Swan, whose intense multi-layered performances seem to fuel the same transcendent energy of their releases.

The OP-Z’s ultra-minimalist, candybar form factor hides some serious synthesis, sampling, and audiovisual powers – and now new live visual/VJ functions, too.

We’ve seen plenty of efforts to make it easy to build song ideas from samples and loops on mobile. With a Mac launch, Endlesss now does what it set out to do – make those sound materials connect everywhere.

Bitwig’s new 808 freebie is massively multisampled and uniquely integrated with Bitwig Studio – which opens up the possibility of playing bass lines on it or integrating it with modular patches in The Grid.

NVIDIA’s Omniverse is in open beta. Even saying what it is is hard to do because something like this hasn’t really existed before, but now working together on 3D in real-time got way easier. And if 2020 demonstrated anything, it demonstrated how much creative technology needs that collaboration to progress.

The free stuff keeps coming. Now for PC users on any 64-bit VST host, you get a banging remake of the TR-606 drum machine – with some interesting twists.

When arguing merits of vintage synth reproduction, invoking a “plug-in” is often a derogatory slur. Not here – this high-end boutique hardware is made to work with software alone.

This year has brought screen fatigue and club withdrawal alike, so here’s our friend Florian Meindl to cure both of them at once. Get ready for hands-on hardware – even on a tight budget.

If you didn’t get to live-stream Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Festival – or you’re ready for more goodness for Kampala – you’re in luck. There’s great music from “across the continent and the wider African diaspora.”

Love eye candy? Love patching together node-based tools – but don’t want to give up serious JavaScript coding for AI and 2D and 3D graphics and augmented reality? Nodes might be for you. Free, Mac/Windows/Linux. This tool is now coming into its own – and just as winter 2020, amidst bringing a world of hurt, […]