Chris Johnson, aka Airwindows, continues to share his love for DSP with free tools, open source code, and elaborate discussions of the joy of crafting reverbs. So just in case you don’t feel blessed enough with free effects after SuperMassive’s new Sirius reverb/delay, here’s the tiny and the thick in all-new Airwindows editions. And they’ll even run in VCV Rack or on a Raspberry Pi.

You can pluck it, strike it, bow it, use your fingers, use a pick. The Lethelium is upcycled from bicycle parts and imagined in a cycle-punk zombie comic where bike parts save civilization. And all of this could only come from the imagination of Montreal artist Lateef Martin, an artist who lives a sci-fi reality others might only dream of. Or as Lateef puts it: “it reinvents the wheel.”

Sale-itis has made the full year a maddening deluge of discounts. (You know who you are, inbox plagues!) But here are some legitimately excellent deals on music software available now.

Black Friday/Black Week/Cyber Monday/Week/Month/whatever gets overwhelming. But here’s a selection of genuinely impressive discounts, on gear like Ableton Move and Push, Moog, Sequential, Erica Synths, Polyend, and even a couple of favorite Eurorack modules. I keep an eye on a couple of selections that might make good gifts, too.

Ableton Live 12.3 is out of beta; it’s time to liven up your Live setup (plus Ableton Move and Push and Novation Circuit Tracks). Black Friday deals have these at the lowest prices you’ll see all year, so if you’re stocking up for winter or holiday breaks, we’ve got you. These are tools to solve some problems, add some inspiration, and even just make your Live setup look better.

Valhalla isn’t done with reverb/echo blockbusters to reverberate through the end of 2025. The free plug-in — so good we really would pay for it — is back, and now it’s gotten Sirius. Welcome Super Massive 5.0.0.

It’s Thanksgiving in the USA, but Germany’s got your Protein, and what a surprise. The classic Microwave 1 wavetable sound meets a tweakable, compact desktop housing and 4-layer, 8-voice architecture. A Keto diet has never sounded more appetizing. Price? €329 in Europe intro, incl. VAT (€379 after the end of the year.) Out now.

Tokyo-based startup Dreamtonics is doing unparalleled work with AI-powered voices; their Synthesizer V Studio enables a level of precision that combines that of recording and synthesis. Add that to Steinberg’s Dorico scorewriter, and you get a machine mockup of solo singers and choirs that we’ve never heard before. But there are a lot of details involved — so let’s hear from an expert.

Mix in 3D, drop in 3D objects, lighting, text, particle systems: EboSuite Sensei delivers an entirely new ecosystem of modeled 3D VJing. Powered by Unreal Engine under the hood, SenSei runs as entirely self-contained Ableton Live Devices. And the results are already impressive – even on an M1+ Mac or decent PC GPU. EboSuite had […]

It’s Lucy and the football time with the music industry. Having led artists into a complete disaster with streaming, they seem poised to do it again, on a grander scale, with generative AI. Warner has a deal with Suno today, following Udio earlier this week. Peace for our time.