What could community and imagination in music making look like? Laurie Spiegel’s reflections on the 70s and earlier decades, recorded in 2014, offer some clues, even for a very different time today.

Ableton Live 12.2 is in public beta today, with some major welcome features. Bouncing is easier, Auto Filter gets its biggest update since it came out, and there are new generative harmonic features, Meld and Roar updates, Push enhancements, and more. Here’s your guide.

Naarm/Melbourne’s own Nitecaller is making dreamy sounds- and now has the home-built dreamy synth to match. Meet the T-16 semi-modular synth, recreating and expanding on the analog circuits of classic ARPs, built by Nitecaller and his brother.

Predating the iPhone by half a decade, JazzMutant’s Lemur brought Star Trek visions to life* and established many of the multi-touch interactions to come. But its beloved iPad port has been unavailable — until now.

It’s a different vision of a festival and exhibition, one that bubbles up from the Kiez instead of being collected in modern palaces. For the next few days, artists from the Berlin neighborhood around Kottbusser Tor will reveal their self-image in communities in exile.

Nothing punches like the Novation Bass Station, the UK company’s 1993 analog original. GForce Software makes a pretty good argument for making this a plug-in: emulate all the powerful sound of the synth and its filter, but add awesome modulation, effects, and sequencer/arp, unison mode, up to 16-voice polyphony, and make it mega-affordable (or free with a keyboard controller).

The Alan Parsons/Keith Adkins handmade, one-of-a-kind Frequency Translator was a key component of The Dark Side of the Moon. And its sound has been hard to describe, let alone recreate – until now. PSP Audioware worked with the one and only Alan Parsons to model it in plug-in form in a personal passion project they’re releasing as PSP Wobbler.

Just when you need it most, here’s a fresh idea in hardware. Gearnews leaks new motorized MIDI controller hardware from Melbourne Instruments, the Delia and Nina synth maker.

Nothing about this year was normal; next year promises the same. But that’s what music is for – to reframe moments in time.

From La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela to Valee and Gangsta Boo, Michael Vincent Waller talks to us about collaboration, mixing, and connecting the dots between modern Classical/new concert music and hip-hop.