What's it like playing the phase8 (electro-)acoustic synthesizer? I get to share my performance for Superbooth, so now is a time to reflect -- and we've got a bunch of gorgeous, delicate, hypnotic creations for the instrument to take you into the weekend.

Playing KORG's phase8, acoustic synth, with videos (mine and others) - CDM Create Digital Music

KORG's phase8, engineered by the skunkworks office in Berlin, has found some visibility. But what does it mean as an actual electroacoustic instrument? What's it like to play? My Lemonade Stand video ...

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If you’re thinking of building bots to write replies or comments, here’s an idea: don’t. Ridiculous. It actually makes more work for us.

On Mac, iPad, or iPhone, connect this and start making visuals, with the ability to add input from the camera, Ableton Link, and Ableton Link Audio. And then go live-code/hack the shaders, too. Nice one from the maker of AUM!

Lucinate video synth animates and live-codes visuals on Mac and iOS - CDM Create Digital Music

From the makers of the utterly indispensable iPad app AUM (among other things), Luminate is a real-time visual environment for macOS and iOS, based on Apple's Metal technology. You can approach this a...

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"I’m always saying, I can think of five ways to do it. Let’s not just explore one. Let’s explore all five." Dennis DeSantis on tools, affordances, teaching, and the new BM in Music Creation and Technology at Eastman. An inspiring read from the author of Ableton's "Making Music."

Dennis DeSantis on Eastman’s new degree; electronic music as instrument - CDM Create Digital Music

Dennis DeSantis is known by a wide swath of the music production community as a face of education at Ableton, including the Making Music book. His new role is at the Eastman School of Music, where he'...

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Europa synth, Kong drum machine, Scream distortion, Audiomatic lo-fi fx and more for free. Plus a boost to the Rack Extensions ecosystem.

Reason now offers 15 Reason devices, plus Rack Extensions access, for free - CDM Create Digital Music

Reason Free brings some of the best of Reason to your DAW of choice, totally free. That includes instruments like the excellent Europa synth, effects like Audiomatic and Scream 4, and more. And there'...

cdm.link

"Why wouldn't I stand up for everybody?" (the "D" in CDM today stands for "Dolly," okay, y'all?)

The Soft Pink remembers and more Dolly Parton - CDM Create Digital Music

Now, we've lost Dolly Parton, which is a wake-up call to stand up for the values she stood up for—in music and in life.

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Bounce MIDI Clips to audio, Warp Markers, landscape view for Session View, and more. It's the little things. Hands-on with 2.1 update for Note on iPhone (tested) and iPad.

Ableton Note 2.1 for iOS update is subtle, but it can change how you work - CDM Create Digital Music

Note 2.1, the iPad and iPhone app from Ableton, might not strike you as a big update. But new ways of working with Clips, Warp Markers, and a refined UI (Landscape Mode!) can make Note way more usable...

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Audio myths and superstitions, begone. Test it--properly. A free online ABX tool.

Test what you're hearing, scientifically: free ABX testing website - CDM Create Digital Music

Can you really tell the difference between encoding methods? Two different kick drum emulations? 16-bit versus 24-bit? These aren't subjective questions: you can actually test them--with science. (Sci...

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Listen to an album all the way through even if you’re not 100% feeling every second of it please do not skip to the next track and then please listen to the whole thing again. Do this every day if you can I love you.

Music is a way to grieve -- and to create a sense of home, even when your home is destroyed. Layan Srour's work and event series from Detroit:

Homesickness and loss in sound, from Detroit to Beirut: Layan Srour - CDM Create Digital Music

What does it mean to grieve home -- being away from home and actually losing home? What does it mean to express that grief in sound, and to create spaces and belong through music? Detroit-based, Beiru...

cdm.link

Gary, Indiana residents have been without power for ten days. Here’s how you can help.

Gary Residents Have Been Without Power For 10 Days. Here's How You Can Help

A South Side business is offering free laundry service for storm-affected Gary families, while another fundraiser is collecting money for essentials as some residents face a second week without electr...

blockclubchicago.org

I googled her name and she’s a health policy researcher who writes think tank reports about gambling harms, we have found the patron saint of UK Bluesky

Qagggy!@qagggy.bsky.social · last wk.

UK transit nerds are next level.

A look at the best music of 2026 that hasn't gotten quite as much attention (or at least, not as much as @dhla.me would like). You had me at "Arpanet remix straight from the particle accelerator lab." A perfect way to queue up your listening weekend:

The best lesser-sung sounds of 2026 so far - CDM Create Digital Music

It's time for a sonic refill. David Abravanel is here with a full supply of lush arps, washes of sound, rapid-fire grooves -- everything Appleblim to Posthuman to Vladislav Delay Quintet, Suzanne Cian...

cdm.link

As much water as every LLM query consumes, just imagine that's the amount of coffee I drink. (@chrisrandall.net was right) No, I'm not using AI (apart from some locally-run grammar check to flag errors for manual review -- caffeinated errors may still appear).

Get your weekend right with quality techno mixing -- and more music from A Homsi and Kettalynne, plus a flashback mix of all Aphex Twin.

Featured mix: listen to MNJM's A Homsi and DJ Saliva play layered rhythms - CDM Create Digital Music

Bored with linear mixing, bland cookie-cutter rhythms, and blunt TikTok-friendly hooks? Let's tune into Loone Berlin instead, as the Homsi from the bleeding-edge MNJM label joins with DJ Saliva.

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Take the complete course online, free. But more than that: this program is a tool to develop new teachers, help young folks acquire skills, and even help them get jobs. Oh, plus the principal investigator makes some beautiful music.

A $5 modular drum circuit, a free online course, and how it grows into more - CDM Create Digital Music

No need to brave the Arizona heat: Glitch'n is a course in electronics that even absolute beginners can enjoy, assembling oscillators, generative beats, filters, and noise on breadboard circuits. But ...

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Daniel Bricklin Picks up the thought in a talk at the business school Thought math was cool Works at his Apple Loading the code that he keeps in a tape on his drive VisiCalc li--- NO STOP I WILL NOT write an accurate history of the spreadsheet as a cover of this song STOP BRAIN

isaac io@eyesack.bsky.social · last wk.

all the spreadsheet people where do they all come from

Now in both desktop and Eurorack, Bluebox adds oscilloscope/spectrum analysis, sidechain compression, and multi-channel USB audio interface operation. Ooh, this solves a lot of needs in modular and hardware rigs. Updating now...

1010music Bluebox 1.5 mixer module and desktop is your do-everything tool - CDM Create Digital Music

There are all these extra things you need in hardware rigs or Eurorack modular. You need to mix stuff together -- and then add effects, and it'd be great to record, and you do still need to connect to...

cdm.link

On the radio again today with Amber Amber, back in town from Romania. An eclectic endless summer edition from both of us, 3-4p Berlin time / 9-10a Eastern. Tune in: refugeworldwide.com Chat live: refugeworldwide.com/chat

Lucid slices, stretches, and scrubs sound like no other granular FX: review. cdm.link/lucid-slices... Oooh, this one is fun. I collect granular effects, and even to me this feels like a breakthrough.

This is a free delight on iPad (or an affordable treat for Mac). Really breathing, flowing patterns. Organismi OR—1, free for iPad: MIDI sequencer. cdm.link/organismi-or...

Makers wishing to comment on the new EU packaging compliance — and indeed whether you’ll be pausing sales into Europe entirely — feel free to get in touch. This looks devastating to small gear makers and music labels, of course, and it’s urgent now with EPR still open for comment.

Synths with wings, experimental granular synthesis, synths you can draw with, optical sensors (including a Web app that flashes your screen to produce sequences), and more. From Tucumán, Argentina, the DIY spirit lives on (and ships worldwide).

Handmade experimental synths and DIY from Argentina's Los Aparatos - CDM Create Digital Music

From Tucumán, Argentina, Los Aparatos are constructing handmade synths and electronics education and DIY projects. And now you can ship their experimental synthesizer, Auduina MK2, internationally. Pl...

cdm.link

I want to say thanks to the listeners who bought sounds on Subvert and Bandcamp. Subvert every day and Bandcamp on Bandcamp Friday mean I have cash in my account to send to Truth be Told and Yara in Lebanon, where she's buying supplies like medicine for folks from the south.

That this haunting song is now a light day away in space should haunt us into some action here on this planet meanwhile...

The PS1 startup sound as a lesbian@janus.bsky.social · 2w ago

Willie Johnson was blind & homeless and wrote this song about having no place to sleep after nightfall. In 1977, it was sent into space as part of the Golden Record onboard the Voyager spacecraft, which exited the solar system in 2012. On 11/18/26, it will reach a distance of 1 Light Day from Earth.

here, if you need assistance quitting the new york times, there's now fridgle to replace wordle. "fighting about toast is a thing" ...

fridgle

daily fridge poetry toy

fridgle.net

ivy sly@ivysly.com · 2w ago

felt like rngdle's ultralimited poetry composer was the only actually interesting part of the whole thing, so i spun it off into my own daily web "game". everyone gets the same 30-40 words each day to compose a prose poem with fridge magnet poetry tiles. fridgle.net #gamedev

The additional oscillator is... you. Like, inside your ear. Inside the unprecedented plug-in otophon -- the psychoacoustic effect it's based on, music that employs that technique, and how to approach a plug-in that tickles the cochlea.

otophon is a plug-in to play tones inside your head - CDM Create Digital Music

This one's for the heads, literally. Otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) are sounds produced by your ear, ghostly tones emitted from inside the cochlea itself. The phenomenon has been employed in experimenta...

cdm.link

Here, for no good reason, enjoy this internal Pontiac corporate video featuring Patrick Stewart. 1990, "a mission of excitement." I don't even own a car, and yes, I want to do slow motion wheelies while Picard says "pon-tiac" in a cool way.

Pontiac Promotional Video: "Get On Your Pontiac And Ride!"

YouTube video by Worden Entertainment

youtu.be

Why aren't we talking more about music as it gives back to the people around us? The history of techno here through John Jammin' Collins is also a story about that, not just now but in the future. (And "do better" does have a Jammin' Collins theme song.)

UR soul: John Jammin Collins' story, Detroit's story, as a call to action - CDM Create Digital Music

Digging into the history of John "Jammin'" Collins, you hear a history of Detroit and the potential of music to give back. The techno and progressive soul legend's journey is also intertwined with hea...

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