We have updated hardware classics, so why not software? Absynth’s original creator, Brian Clevinger, weighs in on what motivates his instrument creations and what strikes emotional resonance. From Native Instruments, Hannah Lockwood joins to talk about the user interface and the collaboration.

My hips are sad. These promos are not moving them; they’re squashed to hell, grooveless, and it’s about as fun to dance to as an Airbus engine drone.* I know how to solve this: N.A.A.F.I, the Mexico-based international label with its unique voice and rhythms patterned on the likes of tribal guarachero, spun by its family of producers into deeply personal bangers.

Tokyo-based startup Dreamtonics is doing unparalleled work with AI-powered voices; their Synthesizer V Studio enables a level of precision that combines that of recording and synthesis. Add that to Steinberg’s Dorico scorewriter, and you get a machine mockup of solo singers and choirs that we’ve never heard before. But there are a lot of details involved — so let’s hear from an expert.

Mix in 3D, drop in 3D objects, lighting, text, particle systems: EboSuite Sensei delivers an entirely new ecosystem of modeled 3D VJing. Powered by Unreal Engine under the hood, SenSei runs as entirely self-contained Ableton Live Devices. And the results are already impressive – even on an M1+ Mac or decent PC GPU. EboSuite had […]

The Hewlett-Packard Word Generator 8006A has become an unintentional legend of sound lovers, transforming this obscure lab equipment into a kind of instrument. So you knew that a Hainbach/AudioThing collab to produce a software version was inevitable. B00GA is available now as a macOS, Windows, or Linux plug-in, or an iOS/iPadOS AUv3 plug-in or app.

It might be a funny intersection of interests. But developer Matt Greenwood built a macOS-native clone of the legendary Winamp in Swift, MIT-licensed, with MP3 and FLAC playback and Milkdrop visualization support (including fullscreen).

For the final episode in this trilogy on learning Max for Live and Ableton DSP Objects, we’re going to keep the focus on working fast. We’ll learn how to use Ableton DSP to prototype instruments quickly, play expressively, and hack them with some tricks and mods beyond what the stock Live Instruments provide.

Data Knot is the best of AI and machine learning: low-latency, optimized, performance-friendly, responsive — a set of building blocks for gestures and sounds that you customize. Built on the Fluid Corpus Manipulation project (FluCoMa) by composer/artist and self-described “crazy person” Rodrigo Constanzo, it’s something else musicians and artists love, too: it’s free.

Despite bombing, drone attacks, and sleepless nights, Kyiv continues to support a burgeoning experimentalism in sound, driven by an appetite for noise and engineering. And it’s bringing more people into that community. Here’s a look inside.

What if you could drop in a bunch of stems and let a plug-in mix and master for you, subtly or to extremes, with no “AI” involved? That’s the latest idea from Tim Exile, and it’s produces such quick, varied results that it can serve as a one-click way to hear your mix creatively from a different angle. Just when everyone had forgotten about Instagram filters, we finally see their equivalent in music. And it’s a delight.