Peter Kirn

If anyone following me has a platform / knows a journalist covering the region, Ayman is making himself available to talk, including connections to other people on the ground working with the forcibly displaced.

And then -- this.

The best way to learn Bitwig Grid, Serum 2 is in Japanese from LOBOTIX - CDM Create Digital Music 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 mod...

Bitwig's Grid makes more sense to me *in Japanese* than in a lot of other places. Amazing stuff, amazing music, go check it out. (PhasePlant, Serum 2, Vital, and more, as well...)

the live coding scene is 100% the thing that has made me most excited over the last couple of years: seeing people perform actually live music with computers, as free as jazz, freer, showing their screen, sharing what they're doing with an audience who understand what they're doing has felt so...

Sonification Tools for Ableton Live now has a synth that plays data - CDM Create Digital Music Sonification Tools v2 from Manifest Audio and Noah Pred can now sonify text, images, video, and OSC - plus it's got an all-new 8-voice polysynth that lets you play that data like an instrument. Noah a...

Like this?

cdm.link/sonification...

well, maybe get this alpha working first!

The developer of Tweakbench wants to remake the DAW without linear time - CDM Create Digital Music 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 DA...

It's like left-field Reason. Well, kinda. "rip random audio from youtube to a sampler via keywords or urls ... have a euclidian form generator train a markov chain to play your synths ... play with all 63,050,394,783,186,944-128 frequencies of full microtuning"

alpha preview:

@gundled on Instagram: "Fundraiser for displaced families in Lebanon The ongoing Israeli aggression on Lebanon has resulted in the internal displacement of thousands upon thousands of Lebanese and mi... 391 likes, 6 comments - gundled on March 4, 2026: "Fundraiser for displaced families in Lebanon The ongoing Israeli aggression on Lebanon has resulted in the internal displacement of thousands upon t...

If you are in Berlin, we have someone directing funds on the ground -- Thurs evening event (they head there Friday). You could easily leave your donation at the door if you're not feeling up to the event.

www.instagram.com/p/DVdhebBDlsL/

Lebanon Emergency Relief Arabic, Dutch, French, and Spanish below:

This is probably the easiest international giving route for Lebanon and displaced families -- recommended and verified now by multiple friends.

www.chuffed.org/project/1719...

Soroush Khazaei, audiovisual artist, killed in an airstrike in Tehran - CDM Create Digital Music People are not numbers, and so among the rising tide of wartime deaths around the world are some familiar faces from our communities. Soroush Khazaei was an audiovisual artist who gave generously to t...

These wars are claiming people from our community -- claiming our friends. Remembering Soroush.

Novation Launch Control finally brings back the smart, little encoder box - CDM Create Digital Music The best thing about Launch Control XL is that it has faders. The best thing about Launch Control is that it doesn't -- and fits into a small space. It really is that simple, if contradictory, thanks ...

Basically you don't have to read past the opening of this story. It's a Launch Control XL minus faders, which is actually pretty awesome.

I still love Mutagen. Thanks, RE, for allowing software to live forever.

#303day just ... reminded of abl3 in @reasonstudios.com with Ripley, Mutagen (discontinued), and Bassline Generator.

Michigan Synth Works has an open-source 303 processor and a new kit - CDM Create Digital Music Call it the Bride of x0xb0x. Michigan Synth Works today teased a new, Arduino-compatible, open-source 303 processor, plus a full DIY kit. They’re both affordable ways to build your own all-analog, mod...

The legacy of the x0xb0x returns! An open-source, Arduino-compatible processor (as powered 303, 606, and 909), plus an upcoming DIY 303 kit, from @michigansynthworks.bsky.social

#303day and some @adafruit.com memories...

featuring @shorefreak.bsky.social @martinic.com @cycling74.bsky.social and a bunch of Japanese cats we need to convince to migrate off the elonsphere...

On 303 Day, acid bassline love abounds, and some freebies, too - CDM Create Digital Music Roland is fairly quiet on this 303 Day, but in the maelstrom of terrible news, it was a relief to see the Japanese music community out in force. This is what we really strive for: a world where we can...

Here, have way, way too much #303Day stuff, including a free Max for Live instrument (and Max 303 patching tutorial), free sounds, discounts on plug-ins, a ton of players showing off the 303 and adjacent instruments (especially from Japan), a music mix, and a gorgeous music video.

Also curious to see how I did with the vague round-up of past tape pieces and who you'd add...

Endless joys of the Open Reel Ensemble and reel-to-reel performance - CDM Create Digital Music Japan's Open Reel Ensemble has been active continuously since 2009, with collaborations from Issei Miyake to Ryuichi Sakamoto. But there's a special magic that some of their most experimental performa...

Beautiful use of these machines as kinetic instruments. Have you seen some of this? Probably. All of it? I think not! They've been busy...

If you're trying to break away from your browser, this script will make an ominous horse appear.

I'm slightly worried I may *internalize* this horse now and have it just appear at rando.

Well you can just read my site and catch up on research on theta waves, Iranian music, Max patching, and a really stupid song from Hee Haw.

Okay. I realize I may not be helping people focus.

Learn spectral filters and other spectral tricks in Max (or elsewhere) - CDM Create Digital Music Spectral tools are all the rage. Ever fancied trying to play with those techniques under the hood? Umut Eldem aka Hearing Glass has a great set of video tutorials. They're implemented perfectly in Max...

Get spectral: understand how those tools work under the hood, and even try building one yourself, with tutorials for @cycling74.bsky.social Max:

A reminder in that story of how disconnected people are from Iran and ... some brief notes on what you can do, even if right now it seems very few packets are getting in or out.

From Tehran's Bernisaun, dreams, cortisol reduction, and analog rituals - CDM Create Digital Music In dark times, music and sound can go from seeming irrelevant or empty to becoming a lifeline. The artist Bernisaun from Tehran has been brewing music that can, in his words, "engineer the frequency o...

Sounds from Tehran -- to reduce cortisol and "backup your dreams."

Thanks @bernisaun.bsky.social

Well, whatever happened here happened here. @voxglitch.bsky.social @vcvrack.com

Absolutely -- though there's overlap. I think the ethics require a better common understanding of exactly how LLMs generate their outputs -- and indeed, the big tech is capitalizing on even some fairly tech-savvy people not understanding that at all.

It's not the only issue, but it matters.

I'm curious then -- since I was just scanning some of the latest data science research on this. Have you looked at that research?

none of it remotely says "we don't need programmers anymore"; I haven't heard that from even total AI advocates, *provided* they have engineering experience ;) but...

There's another possibility, too, which is that the code will work just fine, but we need to ask ourselves whether every single tool needs to be a product. That sort of has always been the case, just now ... amplified.

oh yeah, and this! Different issue.

It's weird, this all makes me want to get back into coding ... minus AI.

But yeah back to the original issue -- we really need to arm people, including those solo devs, with an understanding of what these tools mean and how you make the code work.

Well there's a better term for that, anyway -- "broken"

And it isn't necessarily "vibe coding" so much as "firing engineers" or failing to hire them in the first place.

Sorry, now I'm talking about our world in general more than music per se :D

Yeah, and I worry that people will pour marketing money into that. (actually here's a weird precedent for that: 1980s vinyl releases. When you have the capacity for vanity releases, terrible things happen.)

Very different from Max or Pd, where you can open the patch, and people don't do that.

Theoretically, what I just said should appeal to people who are really into using AI, too. Plus AI is just such a huge category, going back to the beginnings of computer music. It feels like we need to have a more robust conversation than we're having now, which will take some work.