Arturia’s MicroFreak is about as much sonic exploration as you can get in any single low-cost synth on the market now. And now it adds more – a new vocoder.

Some events translate poorly online. But making worlds in Unreal Engine has always involved sitting behind a display – so these tutorials prove essential. And they might just help audiovisual producers create new immersive creations.

Hack your Launchpad! Novation’s new r_cycle lets you design your own layouts and interactions, and even turn them into instruments and effects, all in the free Pure Data environment.

Cockos’ REAPER is the stupidly affordable but endlessly customizable DAW. Just one example – this free sixteen-band EQ and spectrum analyzer, created by a user in Reaper’s JSFX*, for free, does just about everything.

VCV Rack offers loads of choices of modules. But what if you want to build your own? Then there’s Prototype – and now it works with the free graphical patching environment Pure Data, so you can create without coding.

Sometimes it’s the little things. Software Xenakios took the Mutable Instruments Plaits oscillator and created a free fork with new features and more front-panel accessibility.

Eurorack and other modular formats, custom instruments, pedals – if you’re making a DIY instrument, this software makes it look all pretty-like, and it’s free. Now seems a great time to embrace DIY culture – audiences worldwide are stuck at home, but possibly ready to invest in gear. Synths Panel Designer, released last week, is […]

AI was going to take the fun out of DJing – selecting and mixing for you. But the reason you’ll use it could be to make music more fluid. Algoriddim’s latest is a showpiece of Apple’s custom silicon – and a possible secret weapon for the rest of us.

Buttons, knobs, faders – yes, they’re decent. But you can’t jump on them, not without serious consequences. What you need is a trampoline.

Hard patching, meet soft patching: it’s Eurorack modular, but with a Raspberry Pi and Pure Data inside each module – which means you can mod and make your own modules, too.