Tau5 will be a hub for live coding music, visuals, and art with friends – or bots

Sonic Pi creator Sam Aaron is building something new. It’s early days, but Tau5 promises to be a “next-gen” creative coding environment. You can use it with your favorite tools, including Ableton Live, hardware, TidalCycles, Hydra, and others. And you never have to feel alone: you can jam with others, code with friends, and even code with AI — or keep it all-human if you prefer. Let’s explain.

Renoise 3.5 is huge: phrase scripting, tuning support, splitter effect, more

Has that DAW grid got you down? Do you feel like you’re caught in the 1980s looking at a multitrack editor? Have your friends stopped talking to you because they want more breaks and intelligent rhythms so they can put those new sneakers to proper dancing use? Renoise is back with features like a phrase scripting engine powered by the new open-source pattrns (with Tidal notation support), full tuning support, sub-signal effects splitting, and more. $88 new. Holy mother of God, it’s nerd Christmas in July.

Peter Kirn - July 8, 2025

This artist is connecting Unreal, Ableton Live for production-grade visualizers

For all the ubiquity of Unreal Engine, a small handful of people are pushing the envelope of what Unreal can do as an audiovisual tool. With years of effects and animation production work under his belt, Zack Berwick is uniquely creative and inventive with the combo – and he’s sharing his approach, using Ableton Live, Max for Live, MIDI, OSC, and UE.

Peter Kirn - March 7, 2025

Sonification Tools for Ableton Live now has a synth that plays data

Peter Kirn - February 13, 2025

Patch in VR using gestures, not controllers: PatchWorld update

Peter Kirn - December 24, 2024

Max 9: new coding and livecoding, new visuals, and Ableton’s sound tools

Peter Kirn - October 30, 2024

Isadora 4 updates the deep media tool for artists – now with remote powers

Peter Kirn - August 1, 2024

Protokol update: free MIDI, OSC, gamepad monitoring utility

Peter Kirn - February 8, 2024

Free Surge XT 1.3 adds OSC, command line, new effects, more features

Peter Kirn - December 8, 2023

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