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
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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
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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.<
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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
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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.
The post Watch as a telephone is transformed into a DIY analo
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Tekno from Baby Audio was easily one of my favorite plug-ins of last year -- it's a rich, "bend"-able, brutal box with the feeling of hardware drum synthesis. And now it gets a step sequencer, plus a ton of tweaks you might have missed in the first releas…
No, MTV is not shutting down, though Paramount Skydance did shutter some all-music video channels in various markets. But never mind: the internet can best even vintage MTV. Tune into MTV REWIND and hit shuffle by decade.
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…
We've had a deluge of superb VCV Rack modules, carrying straight over into the first days of the new year. But let's skip to this one: Jeremy Wentworth's free Grains is the granular sampler you've been waiting for, now available for VCV Rack and 4ms MetaM…
LANDR, the AI-powered music platform, has acquired Reason Studios. That pairs Reason with the Montreal-based platform for mastering and distribution, and LANDR subsidiary SynchroArts (makers of VocAlign and Revoice Pro).
For all the twin woes of the gaming and music worlds, last year saw even more imaginative explorations of music and games. Steam has extended sales on some items and third party sites have codes from a recent sale; Epic Game Store's sale runs through Janu…
Here’s a good way to start 2026: the folks at Surge Synth Team now have their free and open-source OB-Xf synth in beta status in nightlies, with 1.0 just around the corner. And that means this long-running project is just about ready for primetime, bringi…
Happy birthday today, December 31, to Ahmed Muin Abu Amsha. If any song sums up 2025 and the threat to civilians from drone warfare, it’s his cover of “Sheel Sheel Ya Ajmal Sheel” tuned with the whine of the weapons buzzing overhead. On his birthday and N…
What's your New Year's Resolution? I mean, use more music software, obviously. Why, someone has some other goals? Let's get you started with Autodafe, who posted a handy guide to getting up and running with the JE-8086 reverse-engineered emulation of the …
I won’t mince words about the year – on a global scale, things seemed to be falling apart. I’ve likely been to more protests and rallies in 2025 than since before COVID. But we have each other, and we have empathy, and we do what we can.
Digital preservation is the new challenge for synths, just as it is in areas like games. And the Roland JP-8000 got a big leg up with a free and open source release from The Usual Suspects available this month, the JE8086. It’s one of several recent emula…
If some form of magical elves did not arrive with music tools you’ve had your eyes on, here’s some good luck: several big sales are still running, from Max for Live devices to gear. Whether they’re called “holiday” or “end of year” … let’s just call it th…
On the heels of Steep Stims, Clark's latest full-length, we spoke at length about piano delusions, seriousness and play, film scoring, repetition, hardware, live performance, and the strange necessity of cultivating “friendly parasites” in the creative pr…
Food comas. Empty wrapping paper. Or whatever you're celebrating, hopefully you've got some time off to grab a slew of free synth-y gifts available to download right now. Need a soundtrack? 1987 and Atari ST have you covered.
In its bones, Eterna for monome norns returns to some of the original success of monome: doing imaginative, intuitive, musical things with slices. A single audio file transforms via 6-voice sampler/sequencer and 12-page interface into everything from deli…
Much about The Black Dog was and remains wrapped in an air of mystery and mischief, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that Ken Downie’s death this week came as an unexpected shock to those outside of his small immediate circle.
