Scales among updates to the free Ardour DAW — with tuning on the way

Ardour 9.8 continues the rapid, detailed development of this free and open-source DAW, with improved session recovery and clip recording, expanded support for controllers and hardware, and an arpeggiator MIDI tool. The 9.8 update also adds scales and keys, but with a twist: unlike competing software, scales/modes will soon be tuning-aware.

Blind musician Jason Dasent worked with Roland to make a guide for V-STAGE

Jason Dasent, a blind, UK-based Trinidadian musician, producer, and globally recognized accessibility consultant, has teamed up with the Roland Future Design Lab. The result: a comprehensive accessibility guide to every control, jack, widget, and function on the V-STAGE performance keyboard. More like this — a plea to the whole industry. What’s interesting about this is […]

Peter Kirn - August 12, 2026

Play together with Ableton Live, pt. 1: playing in tune

Feeling the need to make music making a little less solitary? In this multi-part series, we’ll be exploring some resources for adapting Ableton Live to playing with others — playing in tune, in sync, sharing ideas, and producing together. So let’s start as instrumental ensembles do: by tuning up.

Peter Kirn - March 31, 2026

Novation Launchkey MK4 range, hands-on: perfect DAW companions?

Peter Kirn - August 29, 2024

Ableton Live 12: a guide to everything that’s new

Peter Kirn - November 14, 2023

Casio’s MT-100 toy keyboard is reborn as a free plug-in for macOS and Windows

Peter Kirn - April 11, 2022

Ableton Live freebies: loads of production-ready pianos and keys in Foundation

Peter Kirn - December 24, 2021

Sequential’s Pro 3 is a new synth, while the others clone – so how does it stack up?

Peter Kirn - January 15, 2020

Arturia KeyStep Pro is the sequencer keyboard we were waiting for

Peter Kirn - January 14, 2020