It’s a sequencer. It’s a generative music maker. It’s microtonal. It’s packed with synth engines and effects. But if other tools get you stuck in presets, this world-builder for Reaktor makes each preset and parameter a gateway to something creative and unexpected.

The music nerd cultural happening – modular pilgrimage is back, and with it… way too much gear to wrap your head around. Here are the not-to-miss picks and of course the exhaustive CDM monster guide.

You’ve got an iPhone or an iPad, and you want to control …. a Max patch, a live visual or VJ app, Unreal Engine, a live-coding synth in Tidal/SuperCollider. Finally, there’s a worthy, fresh option for making it happen – one that makes making layouts uncommonly easy.

It’s liberating – just take your phone or tablet, plug in a USB cable, and you can make music on this hardware synth anywhere. Here’s how to do that, with our MeeBlip geode, plus some tips on the best apps for both iOS and Android. Inspiration is a funny thing, and somehow in the process […]

Yamaha is the one giant name that has mostly shied away from revisiting its past synth glory – but all that could soon be set to change.

Bliptronic is powered by AudioKit and might remind you of some hardware from the last decade or so. If you can remember the Bliptronic 5000 that is

From the creators of the monome grid, there’s a teaser out now for a new standalone box that could replace the computer for various creative tasks – and that builds on the legendary mlr patch.

Novation’s new Web interface means you can play with their Launchpad grid with just a browser, or just browser plus hardware.

From frets to keys to finger holes, musical instruments in every culture have provided ways to easily access musical ideas quickly. But these are physical, acoustic instruments, so any solution they find is more or less restricted to a single set of choices. Digital hardware can do what digital software can: it can be a […]

Hey – don’t forget Yamaha. For all the buzz about Roland and KORG (and American makers like Moog), the titan Japanese maker surely deserves its own enormous claim to synthesizer history. This is the company that made one the most influential polyphonic synths of all time (the CS-80), and introduced the world to FM synthesis […]