Here’s your regular, friendly reminder for those not in the know: if you’ve been puzzled by minijack and TRS connections for MIDI, and why none of them seem to work together, one website has (nearly) all the answers.

Geert Bevin’s awesome, attractive, totally free, and open-source ShowMIDI has reached the 1.0 milestone, with new features and an updated video tutorial to match. If you’re looking to monitor MIDI on Mac, Windows, Linux, or iOS, your ship came in.

Nothing to download, no AI (and it’s not training on your stuff), and nothing to pay: Pikimov is a free Web-based motion graphics tool and video editor. It runs in your browser, but your files stay on your machine. In other words, it’s exactly what you wanted.

If you want your MTV, you’ve got it back. The Internet Archive and Wayback Machine has restored the archives of MTV News (and VICE, while we’re on the subject) shortly after their corporate overlords nuked everything. It’s a move crucial to research – and pleasantly wasting time online.

There’s always storytelling and throughline in Liliane Chlela’s work, even in the most brutal driving grooves. Anatomy of a Jerk delivers that same narrative clarity and floor-rumbling authority, out on Mexico City’s Infinite Machine imprint.

Here’s still more experimental sound and cinematic soundscape creation for free. X-Stream is a new free monophonic spectral instrument from Steinberg, complete with support for manipulating your own samples.

We’ve got ancient Chilean trees, a serial/parallel frequency shifter effect combined with a rich reverb, and a tool you can try in your browser as well as in plug-in form. Let’s talk to acclaimed composer Cristian Vogel about the art and code of NEL ShifterMesh.

The 1978 (or 77, or 79… ish…) Oberheim OB-1 is an underrated gem in Tom Oberheim’s incredible synthesizer legacy. So it’s about time it get its due. Here’s a short documentary by software developer GForce explaining why the OB-1 was such a great instrument.

What’s great? Roar. What’s the best part of Roar? Feedback. What could make it even better? The ability to play it with MIDI notes. Perfect.

Live 12.1 just hit public beta, bringing more than you might expect: major Push additions, new ways of working more quickly with keyboards (and screen readers), a new Drum Sampler and pitch tracking and correction device, and more. Oh, and they finally fixed (my) single most annoying omission in Live. Here’s what’s new in Live (I’ll cover Push separately).