The developer of Tweakbench wants to remake the DAW without linear time

The Digital Audio Workstation can never quite escape the timeline and its roots in multitrack tape. Tweakbench’s new Noemi, which entered alpha last month, starts from scratch. What if music in the DAW could constantly evolve and change? What if the DAW were non-deterministic?

Laurie Spiegel’s Music Mouse is available now from Eventide

1986, meet 2026. Music Mouse from Laurie Spiegel is available now as a new Eventide application — completely faithful to the original, ground-breaking compositional application, but fully modernized.

Peter Kirn - February 17, 2026

Here’s Laurie Spiegel introducing Music Mouse in the 1980s

Eventide has posted a fantastic archival video in advance of their remake of Music Mouse. In this 1987 episode of Midnight Muse, composer and programmer Laurie Spiegel explains the software and takes call-in questions. “Even if we’re very good at the keyboard, sometimes we want our habits broken up,” she says, and “[this] allows you to push melodic lines around in space.”

Peter Kirn - February 16, 2026