It’s not a subscription. And Ableton is still offering their existing “buy now” licenses and upgrades. But if you don’t want to pay for the flagship Ableton Live Suite all at once, you now have the option of a rent-to-own plan. That could be a way for more folks to take advantage of Suite features like full Max for Live support. Here’s how it works.

Multi-dimensional polyphonic expression, connecting gestures underneath your fingers, finally makes the full range of sound synthesis something you can feel. You might even want to practice, like when you first discovered instruments. Let’s take a quick break and look at some examples featuring AAS’ Multiphonics CV-3 and Osmose, for MPE plus modular, then a bonus round with Osmose and Soliste, for string lovers.

The simple, immediate UI of Cluster, the fourth plug-in in Sinevibes’ Dynamic Collection, belies a deep engine. Yes, this is a multi-filter with a sequencer, and yes, with the same ability to sketch in ideas quickly or roll the dice. But you can push the filters inside to open up worlds of sounds.

Pikimov, the no-paywall, all-free, browser-based motion editor keeps adding new stuff — and we’re here to learn along with you as the developer adds tutorials. This week, there’s a new graph editor for easing animation, plus an easy tutorial for making the most of free vectors in your designs and animations.

From Joy Moughanni to Al Shatea Band, Fake Lines: Sono Levant from the non-profit, “non-label” Fake Lines draws together sounds from across diasporas and identities in a time of genocide, erasure, and division. It’s premiering now as I write this on Radio Alhara, with a release coming later this month (and tracks to preview). And it supports a vital cause: giving Gaza back its food sovereignty.

It sounds like the next Bond movie*, but “Tomorrow Returns” heralds a “Major Legacy Drop” from Roland, with the addition that “Something is Coming Soon.” What is Something? It seems we actually get a grainy image:

plugdata, the visual programming environment for sound and media based on Pure Data (Pd), is becoming its own scene. It’s a great place to start patching your own sonic experiments, and if you haven’t already done that, you should. But it’s also becoming a treasure trove of free and paid tools and toys for musicians even if you never touch the wires inside. v.0.9.2 makes that better for developers and users alike. And did I mention it’s free, on Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS/iPad?

Sequential’s new Fourm is a 4-voice polysynth with an all-analog signal path and polyphonic aftertouch and a price under a grand. To pull it off, Sequential designed an all-new expressive keybed and adapted their signature analog circuitry from the Prophet-5 (and Prophet-10). I spoke to Sequential about their instrument and the engineering that made it all happen.

Forget what you know about drum machines. You’re about to open up a browser tab and listen to a drum machine made with a bouncing DVD logo, or a game of Minesweeper, or seismic data, De Bruijn sequences, or pics of cats and boots. Okay, it’s fairly short of 10k — they’re at 48 so far — but if this is your first time, you’d better plan on not getting any more work done today anyway.

The history of computation is connected to textiles. And in everything from choreographic gestures to weaving, one event makes patterns sing in music and materials and bodies. Across Sheffield, Berlin, Barcelona, Linz, and online, the latest Alpaca Conference is entering its second weekend, following an in-person festival the first weekend.