Flow was the surprise of the Oscars: a true underground hit from Latvia’s writer/director Gints Zilbalodis. It’s beautiful, expressive, and intimate in a way that big-studio features are not. And it’s a triumph of making the tech operate on a human level, fully exploiting the free and open source Blender and its real-time render engine EEVEE.

Acidwerk puts the acid in acid. Yes, this is a generative bassline and drum synth. No, it does not make the vanilla acid you might be imagining. It’s a beautifully bizarre instrument perfect for creating some chaotic noise in a browser tab right after you’ve closed … the news.

cables.gl is a wonderful creative environment for everything the browser can do visually – interaction, motion, and 3D. And now it sports a full open source MIT license and a version you can download and use offline.

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.

Synthstrom’s Deluge, a do-everything sequencer-sampler-synth instrument beneath a lit-up grid, is going open source. We’ve got the details from Synthstrom about how that will work.

Going on the grid is way more interesting when you compose the grid. Click Tracker, João Pais’ free and open-source click track generation for tons of platforms (even Max and Pd), keeps getting more functionality.

The Dart line of controllers is an Arduino-powered array of devices, either for DIYers in shield form and with open software and specs, or mutated into a cornucopia of peculiar-looking devices. DMX and MIDI support and full customizability. This is old news, but now feels like the right time to rediscover them. It’s impossible not […]

It’s a stunningly powerful groovebox you can run in a browser tab – and now, not only is it improved, but there’s a new default open sample library. Of course, that means you’ve got open sounds and patterns for use in other projects, too.

Music gear and software supports MIDI. Visual software supports OSC. You have a network and want to easily run MIDI over it. Sound familiar? Here’s a clever free tool (with open code you can also learn from) that acts as an essential tool.

As the TV car ads say – no money? No problem. VCV Rack can get you into some extraordinarily deep sound making for free. And thanks to a crowd funding effort, what’s available in the Audible Instruments range has expanded.