Crises are a given; resilience is a given – to slightly bastardize the author’s words on Beirut’s Underground Scene, Hajar Ibrahim’s portrait of a musical world. But in this book, released this summer, what you get is more personal. It’s the underground telling its own story, rather than having one framed for it.

This year has proven that independent music developers are able to give back and share resources. It’s important to follow up on those efforts, too. So here’s how it went with Soundtoys and flood relief in Vermont – flashback to summer.

Dnipro Modular and Sinevibes are collaborating on an upcoming Eurorack module, adding Sinevibes’ effects to Dnipro’s module design. And the module is being produced in Ukraine. We’ll have more info on this soon, but I’m set to clear some rack space already. It’s a shining bit of collaborative engineering with friendly design and cosmic capabilities.

With Ableton Push 3, Max for Live effects, instruments, sequencers, and other tools can work on standalone hardware – even without your computer. So it’s a perfect time to look at how Max for Live devices can work without a computer display – and, by the way, that’s just as useful on Push and Push 2, as well. Here’s what you need to know, as a user, a first-time patcher, or an experienced developer.

In the “that didn’t last long” files: Epic Games is divesting itself of Bandcamp after barely a year and a half. The music platform will be acquired by Songtradr, a “music licensing platform and marketplace company supporting artists, labels, and publishers.”

MIDI starts with the obvious – in and out, easily understood. But then it throws us this curveball of a preposition – thru. Through? Let’s really talk about what it means, what a thru box or MIDI splitter is for, and how this knowledge can help you keep your gear timing perfectly tight.

Here’s a product name I didn’t expect to come back: it’s the Roland GAIA 2. But despite the name and form factor, the new GAIA has a different architecture – virtual analog plus wavetable, and support for (some) Model Expansions so you can swap out different instrument engines.

Moog Music has responded to concerns about last week’s layoffs in their Asheville, NC production facility, via their Facebook page.

Welp, now that we’ve been putting modular environments inside modules inside modular rigs, next we get to make TouchDesigner play Bitwig Studio and Bitwig Studio play TouchDesigner — and Bitwig’s modular The Grid and TouchDesigner’s modular UI interact. It’s all coming on the eve of the TouchDesigner Roundtable in Berlin – and it’s even part of the official Touch build. 3D and generative visuals, meet the DAW.

So far, it’s got just two DAWs behind it – Bitwig Studio and PreSonus Studio One – but DAWproject’s creators hope the format will become a new open standard that lets you move projects between software.