Learn how to arrange your modular tracks with VCV Rack, Ableton Live

It’s one of the first challenges with any modular – you get a wild banging groove, but then… you’re stuck with it. One new video tutorial suggests a way to arrange your modular with Ableton Live and free VCV Rack software. Live’s real-time arrangement and triggering features have always been part of its appeal – […]

Watch a beautiful video about vocoder history from The New Yorker

It’s time for a throwback – this video was produced in 2014. But don’t miss out on a serious vocoder love fest full of history and celebrity interviews. And just wait, because the vocoder may be about to make an AI-fueled comeback.

Leakage is a freaky Ableton Live bass machine, Wavetable monster, from $0

It’s an automatic glitching bass. It’s a transformative set of 128 Wavetable sounds. It’s a Max for Live chaining device. It’s all of that – it’s Leakage, the free/pay-what-you-will Ableton Live creation from Tom Cosm. The idea is to give you ever-changing bassline sounds each time you hit a note, for colorful and glitchy results. […]

Vector dreams, in a new book on sound-modulated light

Like alien artifacts dug up in sci-fi, once-forgotten technologies are resurfacing as newly futuristic. And so behold vector synthesis – that moment when signal for light and sound intertwines.

How to patch 3D visuals in browser from Ableton Live, more with cables.gl

Now, even your browser can produce elaborate, production-grade eye candy using just some Ableton Live MIDI clock. The question of how to generate visuals to go with music starts to get more and more interesting answers.

SEGA, Taito arcade come to KORG Gadget on Nintendo Switch

Here’s one serious Japanese game + music nerdgasm: legendary arcade maker Taito, game giant SEGA all come together on the KORG platform on the Nintendo platform. KORG Gadget on the Nintendo Switch was always at least an intriguing novelty. As with titles for Nintendo DS and Game Boy before it, bringing a music creation tool […]

Explore the visual wonders of TouchDesigner: Summit, free workshop video

Few software tools have proved as expressive in generative visuals or audiovisual performance as TouchDesigner. Get introduced to its AV powers in a new, free video – or if you can make it Montreal, get the full experience live. TouchDesigner is a dataflow tool – a graphical, patchable development environment – uniquely suited to squeezing […]

FL Studio 20.5 adds free FLEX, a surprisingly powerful preset synth

So, I hear you like tuned 808s. And strings. And pianos. And wavetables. And FM. And filters. And… okay, let’s just put all of those in one synth but make everything a preset. Meet FL Studio 20.5. The folks at Image Line are always full of surprises – somehow their always-free-upgrades churn out more and […]

The OP-Z now samples, too, in Teenage Engineering software update

The OP-Z is the aggressively minimalist, love it-or-hate-it compact synth. But now an update makes it make way more sense – with sampling available, this pint sized synth turns into the instrument it was meant to be.

A documentary on Dresden’s techno scene, now free to watch

Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne … try Dresden. Rauschen im Tal, a documentary of the emergence of Dresden electronic music, struck a nerve and sold out theaters. And now it’s free to watch (in German, with English subtitles).