What if an integrated plug-in instrument could rival even full-blown modulars? That’s the question posed by u-he’s Zebra 3, out now at long last for macOS, Windows, and Linux. It’s unlikely any other soft synth takes on just this much synthesis territo

"Gramps, tell us the story again!" Well, young'n, before LLMs and generative AI, we were really excited about making big clouds of dots using statistical techniques for visualization. And actually, it's still cool -- and runs free, lo

If you need an excuse to suit up for an extravehicular activity in the cosmos of sound, Absynth is back again. Native Instruments quietly dropped Absynth 6.1, with oft-requested LFO retrigger and undo/redo, plus a surprise: a new audio modulator.

Skip the laptops and loads of proprietary hardware with an ultra-simple, portable, affordable add-on that turns any turntable into a digital vinyl turntable. That's the pitch from NAP Works for crowdfunded, compact hardware built on open-source tec

UAD Explore is a surprise. This is no "intro" or limited pack; eight stand-out Universal Audio plug-ins are available for free. That's on top of the company's free Luna DAW — though the plug-ins will also work in your DAW of choice, n

Let's hear it for reverbs you can play, morph, squash, and swell -- not just set and forget. That's Intellijel Swells, the "Multi-Model Reverb Module with Swell Generator," or perhaps more aptly, "a lush reverb with a bunch of fa

By separating frequency spectrum emphasis from phase modulation, the “hybrid vibrato” Duality can create unique, clean, stereo-spinning pitch modulation. It’s one of Sinevibes’ most nuanced — but also most compelling — effects. I’ve been working with p

It seems like just yesterday we were ogling the launch of Akai's inexpensive, ultra-portable standalone MPC ...okay, three weeks. But Akai delivered some important updates in the 1.3 firmware, available today, on top of V1.2.1 (in case you blinked)

The prolific Kaximia of Tembra Modular and the series "Let's explore modular synthesis" transports us to a Synth Days holiday weekend event in Kyiv. Let's welcome her CDM writing debut, as she gives us a window into a Ukrainian modula

This looks like a good case of what happens when a simple idea does a ton of stuff -- the opposite of a unitasker. Two faders, but there's attenuator, attenuverter, crossfader, preamp, line level booster, panner, mixer, and and and...

The po

Again and again, music communities in Lebanon have embraced mutual aid and spoken out through activism and in their art. That's been true from experimental music labels to the Beirut Synthesizer Center initiative. They're getting results. It

Reason 14 probably won't cross off every item on Reason users' wish lists. But it sure tackles a lot: a new Track Panel and workflow, tons of improvements to the sequencer, Dark Mode, automatic import tempo detection, and more. Plus, since ever

Swedish manufacturer Elektron is no longer independent; Bonnier Capital has bought a controlling stake.

The post Elektron is the latest firm to be acquired by private investment capital appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

I'll take a side order with the fixins'. Objeq Delay gives you the signature physical modeling resonator that's the secret ingredient in AAS' main-course instruments, but in a handy multi-effect with stereo delays and filters. Version 2

Crispy claps on-demand, human and machine, meet a bunch of processing and sample Device tricks in CLÄPP II. London live-looping musician extraordinaire Beardyman had an itch and scratched it using Live and Max for Live, and the results are delightful.

Your mission to investigate sonic anomalies could use a holiday boost. NeverEngine Labs' Incline gets a significant update today, festively labeled as an "Easter egg." Now you get internal echo in playback, high-fidelity audio output opti

SP-404MKII version 5.50 brings two long-awaited features — side chain compression and exFAT SD compatibility. Here are those details, plus a #404day round-up of the fabulous videos you’re making. #404day has come to a conclusion in Japan — but that mea

OpenShot, the free and open-source video editor for macOS, Windows, and Linux, got a major update in March with version 3.5. It runs faster, handles edits and audio better -- 18 years into this project, OpenShot is looking like something pretty much ev

There are tricks for getting low-end, and then there's the Voice of God. UA's (official) version is good as ever, and now at last, you can run it as a plug-in without any UAD hardware. We're getting all the classics this week.

The po

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&#

Electro-Harmonix has collaborated with plug-in maker MixWaves to bring four signature pedals to plug-in form. Big Muff, Memory Man, Electric Mistress, and Small Clone are now coming to your DAW, not just your pedalboard, individually or as a bundle. …

Imagine granular synthesis, taken in entirely different dimensions. That’s Incline -- Cristian Vogel’s cross-bred mixture of microsound and machine learning segmentation. It explodes sounds into a highly configurable topography, then applies precise en

In the face of violence and erasure, give some attention to people who stay loud and give something back. High Hats Community’s new compilation is a guide to breaks, breakcore, and experimental underground music from Lebanon. But it’s also a window int

It was arguably the moment the boombox peaked: the GF-909/GF-777 from Sharp boasted dual cassettes, radio, and massive sound. Now, Bumpboxx has decided to reboot that boom box for 2026, with a modern machine that can do everything -- CDs, tapes, radio,

Oliver Greschke's Elastic OSC continues to blossom as a mobile instrument. Packed with open-source algorithms from Mutable Instruments' Plaits as oscillators, Elastic OSC has added powerful modulation and now supports Android and MIDI Polyphoni

From Indonesia to the planet, Wukir Suryadi sends a distress call in insistent strikes against his hand-built kentongan instrument. If you want an answer to what music we should be making in this moment, perhaps what you need is Titir -- a warning.

Now, raw data can be a musical source in Ableton Live 12 Clips -- for free. Manifest Audio's Datafree shows the potential of Live's Generators, transforming any pasted numbers into music and sound. There's a deeper rabbit hole to go down, b

It's real, it's adorable, it's an MPC you can hold in your hand, and it costs just $399. Tiny desks now accommodate whole studios. But now that Akai has shared the full specs for MPC Sample — why not compare it to the original 1988 MPC60, s

In Lebanon, over one million people, about a fifth of the population, have now been forcibly displaced by Israel. From inside the country and uniting an artist community around the world, Tunefork Studios and Beirut Synthesizer Center have issued a pow

EboSuite and its 3D, Unreal Engine-powered companion, SenSei, put video and visuals into your Ableton Live set, plus integrate easily with other live visual tools and workflows. And now both are on a special Spring Sale — plus SenSei gets another updat

Hüma Utku's mixes and productions both delve into marginalia and mysteries of the unknown, the fragile gestures in the shadows. And it seems that's what we need right now.

The post Stillness and radical presence: Mercurial Cycles mix fro

Reach out and draw and manipulate sounds, directly from the spectrum. IRCAM Forum's Pierre Guillot lets us know three ASAP apps are now available on iPad, free of charge. It's what it feels like the iPad was made to do.

The post Hands-o

Native Instruments this morning issued a statement that its restructuring is moving along, including advancing insolvency proceedings and "an active M&A [mergers and acquisitions] process that is progressing well." Translation for humans:

We’re in an unexpected golden age for compact sample, synthesis, granular, and sequence gadgets. So let’s give some extra love to 1010music’s awesome Bento — which, because it doubles as a mixer and recorder, goes well with any other bits of gear you m

The year was 1996. And Trent Reznor and NIN loved id Software so much that they made a deep, dark, legendary soundtrack for the breakthrough game Quake, for no fee — just for “friendship.” At a time when creativity can feel under attack, and the real w

What if you could remake Ableton Move to do anything, using Max -- the audio engine, I/O, every pad, button, encoder, and even the display? That's RNBO support on Move. It's labeled "experimental alpha," but I've been testing RNBO

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so a good excuse to revisit this 2023 compilation of Irish experimental and electronic music back to 1960 — especially as the label has some updates from the underground scene recently. From handmade instruments to bedroom-produ

Pikimov 5.1.0 is now available as an offline app, bringing all the browser-powered video editing and motion graphics powers of this tool to a standalone tool — no internet connection required. The browser version is free forever; for offline capabiliti

Rebel against the anti-intellectual world around us! Forget the traumas of math classes past! Instead, enter a hypnotic trance as your screen vibrates and headphones ring with the sight and sound of Pi's approximations. Our friends over at VDMX wou

“Chino Yoshio, a composer based quietly in Kyotanabe, Kyoto” has been working with sine waves in poetic, beautifully reflective ways. I’m going to run today with the idea that sine waves need not be just neutral, the absence of harmonics — not just a t

Chattering hyperreal vocal rhythms, delicate sparkling piano gestures, spacey pads — I’ve built a free bank for you for Baby Audio Grainferno. Here’s the download (direct download link), plus some tips on making your own sounds and banks. Download and

Kyiv-based Sitka Instruments is making the awesome Gravity Eurorack clock module open-source hardware. It's an easy and affordable build, and there are already cool alternate firmwares available, with more to come. Sitka is supporting the community

Per-grain processing, automatic pitch controls, drag-and-drop modulation, and audio-rate oscillations -- Grainferno proves there are still unexplored frontiers in granular synthesis and hand-crafted DSP. It's addictive to add the synth to projects,

Bitwig Studio 6 has arrived after an extended public beta period. A lot of Bitwig users might barely notice, since you switched full time to this release for its polish and workflow improvements — but here’s a refresher, with tips. With all the nuances

Steinberg's Dorico is slowly realizing a dream of notation that has spanned decades of scoring software. How could you combine engraving precision (think Leland Smith's SCORE) with graphical ease-of-use? That might sound easy, but it's been

Unofficial screen reader support in Ableton Move may be new, but it's already a revelation. Andre Louis, a visually impaired musician and technologist/artist extraordinaire, takes us on a tour of Move Everything. That's must-watch material, I h

With an unprecedented minimum of 450,000 people displaced in Lebanon, community-led efforts are again working to provide basic aid. These often overlap with the very music and creative communities I've written about here, in the country and interna

Time to dust off that TI-82, TI-83, or TI-84. The graphic calculators that a lot of us used in school can become ingenious chip synths and even run trackers. And that translates to a surprisingly powerful graphing calculator-inspired synth -- one that

LOBOTIX is another reason to have hope in musical imagination. Even without speaking a word of Japanese, these are instantly some of my favorite tutorials. Here, these cover the spectral synthesis modes in Serum 2 and the modular capabilities of Bitwig

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 th