David Tudor’s Rainforest series is a beautiful artistic use of resonance, a well that never runs dry. So as I was going through some teaching notes today, I found myself returning to Tudor’s thoughts on the piece, plus a 360-degree record of a recreation at MOMA a few years back.

The founder of SOMA Laboratory announced he would participate in an event in occupied Crimea in September at a venue backed by the Russian government. That revelation has produced an outcry from Ukrainian and international musicians and cultural workers – starting with a former Mariupol resident.

Ableton Live has never had a built-in notation view, but one intrepid developer has created one in Max – and it’s free/donation- and community-supported. And it works beautifully.

From the creator of Strokes, Stacks is a unique 4-voice wavetable morphing polysynth combined with a 4-track granular looper. But that description doesn’t really do it justice: modeling and digital grunge combine to make a raunchy instrument that behaves like an experimental studio.

Falling through a hole in space-time from 1978-1979, the Oberheim OB-1 seems strangely at home as a monosynth (or polysynth) in 2024. GForce made an addictively good recreation in plug-in form – and it’s the perfect time for Tom Oberheim himself to weigh in on his creation.

Resolume Arena, Avenue, and Wire got a nice little bump update as this media server / live visual platform continues to excel. That includes features other environments should copy, like an easy transform widget and group-able, fold-able parameters for inputs.

Bitwig Studio, by default, has one love-it-or-leave-it color scheme. There are contrast controls, but that’s it. Without an official, supported solution, users have banded together to create their own customization – and some of the themes they’re producing look fantastic.

Talk about “business techno”: corporate techno appropriation continues, as Elon Musk has evidently opened an employee-only club space at the Gigafactory Berlin. And it’s emblematic of some political storm clouds gathering over the German capital.

From Bethlehem, tune into a live recording of some of the best MC and production talent Palestine has to offer—and a deep-felt cooling session, like a gentle stream.

If you’ve been dazzled by some of the motion and interaction design for Max for Live tools I’ve shared lately but don’t know where to start in your own patches, it’s all about jsui. And to get you started, we turn to Estevan Carlos Benson.