The 1982 Poly-61 was a grimy, cheap, raw-sounding quintessential 80s synth. It doesn’t have any of the star power of other Korg instruments or rivals from Roland and Sequential. So instead of a commercial remake, what we get is free. But it’s fantastic. It’s way better than you’d expect from a free plug-in. Meet the Full Bucket Music FURY-68.

We need to talk about how good Fat Bard’s game soundtracks are. Super Space Club rebooted Asteroids as “a lo-fi space shooter to chill to,” set to the St. Louis production duo’s beats – and that game is free right now on Epic Game Store. So grab that. But it doesn’t end there.

Developer Oliver Greschke (MoMinstruments) built an AUv3 iOS synth around the DSP from Emilie Gillet’s legendary open-source Mutable Instruments Plaits VCO. Elastic OSC gives you unique touch-based controls, plus new features that let you use Plaits’ sound palette as a complete mono/polyphonic instrument.

We’ve got physical modeling for instruments, so why not pair them with physical modeling in 3D objects? Anukari is the latest instrument to do that, with lovely-looking modeled visuals and the ability to run as a plug-in as well as standalone.

A musician-led initiative is aiming to bring more plug-ins to Linux. That includes promoting developers (both proprietary and libre/open source), featuring software for users, and answering developer questions. Linux Audio Plugin Development (LAPD) is already worth a look; you’re likely to discover some plug-in or information you hadn’t before.

Okay Bitwig Studio fans: your hardware has arrived. Bitwig’s own Connect 4/12 is available now (and yes, that includes the beleaguered market of the USA). Plus Melbourne Instruments’ appetizing-looking Roto-Control with its motorized knobs now has Bitwig Studio support, following Ableton Live support – and they say the integration is even deeper this time.

Have you ever, half-asleep, felt a melody drift with ease through your brain, humming with electricity, only to lose it again? In The Vapornet, Claudia Khachan and Ziad Moukarzel mind-meld in a collaboration that makes that moment come alive.

SpaceBlender is technically a reverb, but don’t think of SpaceBlender as a reverb. Soundtoys’ new “imaginary space machine” uses a unique algorithm to produce rich new timbres and deep, cosmic, smeared wormholes of sound and texture. It’s a cross-breed of swarm synthesis and reverberation. I’ve been beta testing and talking to the developer; here’s the scoop – and act fast, as it’s free through May 22.

Nazar’s Demilitarize, out this month on Hyperdub, is essential listening – reimagined Angolan kuduro DNA woven into a sound world inspired by processing trauma and absorbing the ethos of anime classic Ghost in the Shell. It follows two releases that responded to the civil war with an imaginative, intimate coda.

Steinberg Dorico remains the commercial scoring tool to beat. Dorico 6 for macOS, Windows, and iPadOS adds a bunch of new features, but I’m particularly excited to see features like Lutosławski-style cutaways, system-attached items, and full OpenType glyph positioning and glyph substitution features. For advanced contemporary music, this is exactly the flexibility we were waiting for across the evolution of Sibelius and then Dorico – and it’ll be welcome news to those arriving from the now-discontinued Finale.