CDM Create Digital Music

TouchDesigner POPs course gets your brain around geometry for visuals

Peter Kirn — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:18:13 +0000

In a world that's definitely trying to make us dumber and more depressed, let's grow our brains instead. Our friends over at Derivative have a free course that finally makes it easy to start working with POPs -- the Point OPerators that enable all that wild 3D geometry you see in live shows and installations.

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Free: 4ms VCV Rack ROMplers put gobs of drums under voltage control

Peter Kirn — Tue, 19 May 2026 21:19:08 +0000

The library for the free and open source VCV Rack has been on fire lately. But this one is a standout: 4ms has a sprawling library of ROMpler modules based on classic drum-machine samples. And don't let the "ROMpler" part fool you: those samples are ready for full voltage control.

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Free: Unfiltered Audio BattleFX with Shatter Delay, Headspace Reverb

Peter Kirn — Tue, 19 May 2026 20:49:09 +0000

Something special happened when Unfiltered Audio untethered their effects section from their mind-blowing drum machine Battalion: this delay and reverb opened up to creative rhythmic use everywhere. And for some reason, they're giving it to us for free. Maybe we're really good people or something.

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Free: Minimal Audio Hybrid Filter, and some tips on how to use it

Peter Kirn — Tue, 19 May 2026 20:17:39 +0000

Minimal Audio is celebrating its anniversary, and so we get the excellent Hybrid Filter for free for a limited time. And what a nice multi-mode filter this is, with a bunch of exotic modes, amplitude modulation, and a built-in envelope follower as a modulation source.

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C25, from Nonlinear Labs and Stephan Schmitt, is all about performance

Peter Kirn — Mon, 18 May 2026 17:58:25 +0000

It's not lost on me that the same week InMusic announced its acquisition of Native Instruments, NI's original founder, Stephan Schmitt was busy showing off new ideas about what a digital instrument can be.

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jumango made a synth you can tuck in so it goes to sleep

Peter Kirn — Sun, 17 May 2026 21:50:13 +0000

Soundmaking and music can fill you with energy, so much so that you might miss out on the importance of a good night's sleep. jumango has engineered a solution: tuck this DIY synth into a blanket, and it falls asleep.

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Maggi Payne, photographing crystals, composing for Moog modular III, more

Peter Kirn — Sun, 17 May 2026 19:27:08 +0000

Texas-born composer Maggi Payne has just quietly been busy being a legend over decade after decade. Well known to Mills College (as its Center for Contemporary Music co-director until 2018), if you don't know her, you should. And this is just the kind of Sunday to gaze at some crystals and listen to her ethereal textures on the then already-vintage Moog modular Series III, in a tip straight from The Bob Moog Foundation.

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Disquiet’s Junto is community music making — now in its 750th edition

Peter Kirn — Fri, 15 May 2026 20:44:42 +0000

It's been running continuously, without a break, since 2012. Every Thursday morning, Disquiet's Marc Weidenbaum posts a call to a community for a new compositional assignment. And this week, the project reaches the 750th (!) week. That means a call for something epic.

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This free tool lets you create interactive, live graphic scores in Ableton Live

Peter Kirn — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:17:40 +0000

It might blur the line between VJ/animation tool and score generator. But SIGN/e lets you produce graphical scores that live inside an Ableton Live session, as abstract shapes appear and shift in time with the electronic music. And with the right players, it looks like a godsend -- free, provided you can run Max for Live.

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High schoolers can learn production at Eastman this summer: interview

Peter Kirn — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:19:35 +0000

If you're in high school, take note -- and if you're not, this may make you wish you were. Electronic music production gurus Dennis DeSantis and Erin Barra are hosting a week-long intensive at the storied Eastman School of Music. I wanted to know how Erin and Dennis would approach the program, so they've shared their ideas about music tools, creativity, and pedagogy with us.

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