This year has kicked off with a renewed conversation about tuning in electronic music. Khyam Allami has helped ignite that interest with free online browser tools anyone can explore, plus performances showcasing them – and has been outspoken about the philosophy behind them and why they matter. Here’s a deep dive into that work.

Forget what platform it’s on for a moment – a Friday is a perfect time to support independent DIY music production, by directly supporting the artist and downloading something that you can come back to again and again.

In self-released sounds emanating from the state of Virginia, glia’s studies in rhythm and phrase are absolutely essential.

KORG’s Modwave synth isn’t even out yet, but CDM sonic wizard-at-large Francis Preve was one of the people making sounds for it. Time to go 20,000 leagues under the sea with this monster wavetable hardware.

Let’s get KORGanized, because the Japanese maker dropped a whole lot of synth news at once. Wave-which now? Reissue? Here it is all in one place.

When you feel like you’re out of ideas, when you’ve obsessed over that edit and that knob, when your mood has gone south… it’s time to stop everything and jam. January doldrums, meet Jamuary bliss.

Lying somewhere between organic and artificial in its sound, the vocal synth Pipa – available as both an iPad app and a Mac and Windows plug-in – is genuinely new and refreshing.

In dark moments, sometimes the most vital gesture is acknowledging uncertainty and feeling. So as we pass the milestone of one year into the next, I’ll be talking through some mixes alongside our year-end music review.

Let’s put all the gear news aside and consider – people are doing wonderful things with sound live. Consider the duo of Giant Swan, whose intense multi-layered performances seem to fuel the same transcendent energy of their releases.

Bitwig’s new 808 freebie is massively multisampled and uniquely integrated with Bitwig Studio – which opens up the possibility of playing bass lines on it or integrating it with modular patches in The Grid.