Surprise! Casio has something unexpected -- Dimension Shifter, a spring-powered expressive wireless controller that attaches to your guitar strap. And it was the invention of one employee, inspired by his kid's school-lunch retracting chopstick and

The experimental electromechanical 8-voice instrument, after a long gestation period at KORG Berlin's skunkworks R&D, is now going public. That means this unique set of sequenced steel resonators is making its way off the laboratory table and i

Tough times and tight spaces call for deep algorithmic generative triggers. So now is a great time for Noise Engineering to reimagine their trigger module. Tap a tempo, patch a cord, and instantly spin up percussive patterns you can freely modulate --

It started with Kastle 2, Bastl Instruments' cute and clever handheld. It could be a multi-effect, a sample player, a synth. Then Citadel modules came along and did those things in Eurorack. Now, Bastl's got a surprise: you can buy these as DIY

As expected, LANDR is adding plug-ins, mastering, and distribution services to the Reason+ subscription. Here's the surprise: Reason Rack is available as a standalone, perpetual purchase for the first time ($199), with Reason perpetual licenses low

More vintage Roland gear is bound for official plug-in versions. Here's the surprise: the CR-78 gets the nicest, most detailed software rendition yet. We also round out those nice BOSS pedals. It could be just what you need for some extra classic R

It leaked, you saw it -- it’s real, it’s huge. In addition to its recent MPC Live III, Akai has a big mama standalone called the MPC XL with more dedicated controls and a big 10.1” display -- but mostly the same innards. Let’s explain.

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Oh yeah, somebody remembered to make stuff that's just fun. Stylophone (Dubreq) is adding to its Pocket Range with an AA battery-powered device that samples, sequences, and adds effects. That puts your sounds under the signature Stylophone stylus -

Sparkle! Slash! PowerUP! This deceptively simple, stupidly fun free browser tool/download generates sound effects in the style of 80s and 90s Japanese animation, all thanks to a clever signal chain. And you can export WAV files, so you could use it to

Prolific as always, Sebastian Tomczak (aka littlescale) just dropped this gem. What do you need nine times out of ten from an audio editor? Visualize, check levels, trim, gain, fade, reverse, normalize, export -- now you can do all of that with one han

More, granular -- less random. That's the pitch from Fractiv, a new sampling granular instrument and effect from Sync Audio. Just when you thought you couldn't squeeze more ideas out of granular sound, they've got some smart ideas, includin

Enter an organic sound machine that will take you to an imagined sound world somewhere between a temple garden and a half-awake dream. ENDOGEN is a dazzling tool, built in Max and SuperCollider, that explores notions of lowercase synthesis. There's

Step through the wormhole into the warped, transcendent sound world of Zoë Mc Pherson and the cosmic visualizations of collaborator Alessandra Leone. The folks at URSSS have captured a full live AV show, so it’s a chance to see even if you don’t have a

It's the crazy-good acid maker, but more than that: Sting is fun for spinning all kinds of melodic and rhythmic patterns. (I'm constantly putting it on percussion tracks.) Now Iftah's back with a Sting 2.1 update with new arpeggiator and pa

Bandcamp is the first major platform to impose a strict prohibition of generative AI. The principles are clear, but how will it work in practice? And is this more symbolic than practically meaningful? Here's a first look.

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Let's skip to the part you care about: Apple Creator Studio now adds Pixelmator Pro and puts every major Mac and iPad creative app under one subscription, and it's not too expensive. But just as importantly, though, you can still buy the Mac ve

For a limited time, you can grab UA's 610-A and 610-B models for free, emulating tube amps, transformers, and EQ circuitry in software form. That includes both the UAD Native version you can run anywhere, plus the DSP version that integrates with t

It's a patcher inside a patcher. And that patcher has more patches that you can copy, randomize, and sequence. And in that patcher is a ton of glitchy goodness. PatchSeq, hot off the grill from Jeremy Wentworth and Voxglitch, is something special.<

Out of Belgium, there's a murky, forbidding free underground netlabel that has survived from another era. It's aggressively anti-algorithmic, soul-chillingly dark in its aesthetics, and committed to free culture and commons like if social media

Push-button telephone. Analog drum machine. Arduino Nano. DIY amplifier. Shashwath Sundar, aka simple_but_nerdy, makes the telephone-drum machine fusion seem like it was meant to be.

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