This live visual newcomer is off to a promising start: live DMX lighting, generative visuals (with video and photos), MIDI control, Ableton Link – and it’s free and open source. It’s coded in TypeScript, with downloads for macOS and Windows; Linux promised soon.

Just when you thought you didn’t need another multi-stage distortion/coloration tool, along comes Roar. Live expert Madeleine Bloom (of Sonic Bloom) says it’s her favorite so far in Live 12, and she’s got a terrific in-depth video going through each feature. If you watch just one tutorial/feature before diving into the Live 12 beta when it arrives, this might be the one. Take a look:

Your music video break begins now. From New York’s Vexillary and 3D artist Leo Andrade (genre: “Cyber Horror”) comes a music video channeling Alien and Venom to imagine a dark sci-fi world for this driving techno-pop anthem. Let’s watch:

Ableton has announced Live 12 today, with new tools for creating sounds, exploring musical ideas, and playing with the software as an instrument.

LEDs, cathode ray tubes, blinky lights – move over. Once you’ve seen dancing animated black goo frolicking in space to sound, you never go back. Love Hultén has been plus-ing their custom instruments with ferrofluids, and the results are simply magical.

If you missed it earlier this fall, Tarik Barri has a great walkthrough of Videosync, the live visual software integrated with Ableton Live on the Mac. Bonus – from the same dev, Beam lets you perform live with lighting, and we can see that in action, too – plus there’s an early-bird edition just for Max.

Okay, visualists and AV folks: Resolume is now on something like a two-month release cadence. This time, there’s everything from vertical text alignment and expanded OSC/MIDI monitoring to vibrance, and – about those Decks…

Roland has updated the OS on their flagship FANTOM 6, 7, and 8 synths. It’s a major update, with everything from a shimmer reverb to Analog Circuit Behavior sounds, stage pianos to some classic synths. If you wanted just one keyboard to play everything Roland, the FANTOM is now that instrument.

From Dieter Doepfer, the fine fellow who coined “Eurorack,” the Basic System 3 looks like a true return to form. This is an open-ended analog system with some room to grow, revealed in a new teaser to start out our week.

In a big synchronized release, Logic Pro for Mac 10.8 and Logic Pro for 1.1 both dropped today. That’s a jam-packed iOS update, new features on both Mac and iPad, and a lot of the new iPad features migrating as expected to the Mac. The upshot: Mac users also benefit from some of the iPad action, even if you’re sticking with the desktop version.