What’s new in the DIY world of Music Thing’s Workshop System

It’s a Very Workshop System Jamuary. Music Thing’s patchable music lab-in-a-lunchbox has proved that small-batch personal hardware can attract a select, dedicated community sharing great stuff with one another. Let’s catch up with what’s been happening in that magical village of synth wonder in the past year. Don’t forget, the ideas and code here are all open — meaning this could inspire more.

Shae O. Omonijo’s free series on critical thinking, staying human, in the AI age

Harvard teacher and PhD candidate Shae O. Omonijo has put a full set of teaching materials online, including videos and a syllabus. This is your guide to staying human, reconnecting with offline communities, and embracing critical thinking and reading even in the AI age. And with that critical perspective comes something you may have been missing: optimism.

Peter Kirn - December 17, 2025

Barry Vercoe, who made coding sound accessible to all, has died

Barry Vercoe, composer and music scientist, founded MIT’s electronic music efforts and helped shape the Lab’s efforts in digital synthesis and machine listening and learning. But his biggest impact came outside the academy: as the inventor of Csound, he took the original innovations of Max Mathews and made them accessible to everyone. The live coding scene that followed has transformed the practice of coding sound into a new form of musical performance.

Peter Kirn - June 17, 2025

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