The Roland-Serato combination stakes out a clear niche: adding live techniques to DJ routines. Now some free sounds and videos will get you started.

Holiday greeting cards: you can buy them in a supermarket. You can draw them in crayon. Or you can custom-code a generative interactive Web greeting.

You’ve seen kick drums that emulate the 808 and such, or synths with a couple knobs. UltraKick goes way past that, for complete sound control.

Year-end lists, while valuable, can blur into vague hype, dizzying lists of artists and tracks. Let’s start by spending some time listening.

Not just for gamers any more: Razer’s high-spec Blade laptop holds promise for music making, too. I’ve taken one for an extended test to see how it holds up.

A defining feature of the original SH-101 was its ability to take trigger ins as clock. Here’s what that means and how to use it on the new Roland SH-01A.

Maschine’s Audio module has arrived, with looping and time stretching. And that makes the perfect time to look at some new ways of playing Maschine.

Native Instruments has a free phaser plug-in called Phasis as a holiday special – and, wow, definitely don’t skip this one.

It looks a bit like what would happen if an iPad, a KAOSS Pad, and a plug-in folder had a love child. It’s the new iOS app from the makers of Elastic Drums.

The tiny, 80 Euro, 8-bit Kastle synth from Bastl just got better. A 1.5 revision updates the case, sound, and features.