Brian Funk aka AfroDJMac continues his epic run of sound packs for Ableton Live, with a Christmas freebie made from sampled fire trucks.

Blah blah, more holiday greetings, oh and — yay, some software asking for an update. But lo, a miracle – this one is just there to give you a free vocoder.

Now you can get hands-free metronome features while you practice and play – without worrying about privacy or needing signal.

As many have observed (even before Roland themselves caught on), the year 2020 is the sum of 303 + 808 + 909.

The pre-Christmas week is turning out to be a great time to load up your plug-in folder. Next – an IK Multimedia rendition of a landmark dynamics processor.

J.J. Abrams, mega-nerd – not only is the Star Wars writer/director a scifi fan, but synth fan, too. No spoilers here, but his love of a certain synthesizer comes out in Rise of Skywalker’s script.

At last week’s MUTEK.JP festival in Tokyo, amidst familiar touring works, you could spot a subplot – returning to color and fluid expression in live AV sets.

The launch video for Microsoft’s Xbox Series X console “borrows” from work by ANTIVJ (and a ground-breaking indie game, too).

I’m dreaming of a reverberant Christmas / with EMT plates I used to know / where my yule log’s combustible / and pre-delays now adjustable / to tweak plug-ins in the snow…

Former KORG Chief Engineer Tatsuya Takahashi is leading a new division in Berlin, alongside COO Maximilian Rest. And it sounds like a different kind of synth business.