Get Legendary cinematic sound design library FREE for Kontakt and WAV
Audio Plugin Deals is offering Legendary, a cinematic sound design library for Kontakt and WAV, as a free download for a limited time. Legendary normally costs $39, and the free version includes both the Kontakt instrument and standalone WAV files. The library contains 459 sounds recorded at 96 kHz / 24-bit. The included categories cover [...]
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Eventide Music Mouse review: The rodent collaborator I never knew I needed$29, eventide.com
It’s 1986. Pixar is founded, the Soviets launch the Mir space station, and American composer Laurie Spiegel creates Music Mouse — an algorithmic harmony tool for the Atari, Amiga, and Macintosh. Within its user manual is Spiegel’s foreword, uncanny in its prescience for the AI tempest that will follow 40 years later:
“This is a very exciting time for music. With the advent of computers, many of music’s past restrictions can begin to fall away, so that it becomes possible for more people to make more satisfying music, more enjoyably and easily, regardless of physical coordination or theoretical study, of keyboard skills or fluency with notation.”

READ MORE: Generative AI’s threat to music sample libraries is existential — Splice thinks it has a solution

Despite her optimistic view of the time, I can’t help but notice an almost perverse parallel with Mikey Shulman’s controversial 2025 comments around AI music production. It’s fitting, then, that Eventide has breathed new life into Spiegel’s vintage software, given the barriers have now been reduced to stringing together a Suno prompt.
In a world where virtually every component of the production lifecycle can be outsourced to an app, Music Mouse offers a wholly different proposition — but is it one that’s relevant to modern producers?
Laurie Spiegel. Image: Donna Ferrato
What is Music Mouse?
Conceived as ‘an intelligent instrument’, Music Mouse generates chords and melodies using the computer mouse — no piano chops required. I’m greeted by a simple grid, its axes bordered by perpendicular keybeds that form the foundation of an intuitive system: move your cursor and the notes change.
By default, the horizontal axis plays a triad and the vertical axis plays a single note, so you can play melodies over chords, or perhaps a bass part underneath:

Pitch is snapped to the selected scale, so it’s impossible to play a ‘wrong’ note — only more or less interesting ones within your selected tonal space, depending how you navigate between them.
Though by no means revolutionary by today’s standards, I’m struck by the software’s immediacy. And it’s an attractive premise: define the system’s behaviour, feed it some input, and enjoy the fruits of the machine’s labour.
Much of Spiegel’s decade-spanning discography has been built on such algorithmic labour. She even went as far as using the genetic code of an infectious pathogen, mapping its RNA sequence to musical notes in Strand of Life (“Viroid”). A substantial portion of Unseen Worlds — the 1991 album to which the piece belongs — was composed using Music Mouse. As I familiarise myself with the program, my understanding of how she did so deepens.
Laurie Spiegel in 1985. Image: Enrico Ferorelli
Composing with Music Mouse
Creating with Music Mouse is all about gesture. Short cursor movements deliver linear melodic motion, while more drastic shifts result in sharper harmonic jumps. Each swipe triggers new notes, but playback can be temporarily muted by holding the left mouse button.
I quickly notice coaxing out a desired result requires some finesse. Although playback is quantised to the set tempo, there’s a knack to getting the timing just right. Life becomes easier once I plug in a USB mouse.
You’ll also need to watch the grid’s axes to see how far you’ve gone if you’re targeting specific notes. In this sense, Music Mouse does fall short of its objective — there’s still some theoretical understanding of intervals necessary for more intentional composition.
With my right hand on the mouse, my left rests on the keyboard, shaping the program’s behaviour in real time through various shortcuts:

Things get particularly exciting once I start experimenting with Treatment and Pattern settings. Many delightful ostinati emerge, though ideas are hard to repeat. If you’re feeling precious, it’s worth recording Music Mouse’s output.

By Spiegel’s own admission, Music Mouse is encoded with her own aesthetic biases, including a nudge towards stepwise contrapuntal movement. With certain settings, things quickly veer into baroque territory. I momentarily ponder what Bach would think.
This bias is restrictive, at times. There are only six Harmony modes, and I can’t help but wonder why Eventide didn’t add more to this modern edition of Music Mouse. It’s a curious omission for a tool built around abstracting theory — modal options or even custom scales would provide a much wider palette.
Using Music Mouse’s built-in sounds
Music Mouse doesn’t just provide harmony — an FM-style synth engine is built in, with 32 presets crafted by Spiegel herself. There’s a distinctly New Age flavour to the sounds — flutish tones, meditative bells, optimistic pads. They won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I find they complement the program’s musical output, and are ideal for doodles and sketches.

A few basic controls allow timbral shaping, but Music Mouse’s sound design options are fairly limited. Fortunately, its MIDI output can be piped into external instruments or the DAW, likely where the tool’s most potential lies. I try pairing it with Baby Audio’s Grainferno synth, then with a TR-808 drum rack in Ableton, which results in intriguing grooves.

I then discover each voice can be routed to a separate MIDI channel, and set up a four-part ‘band’ of synths. As its conductor, Music Mouse really comes alive:

Is Music Mouse worth buying?
I have the most fun making music when I treat it as play. There’s usually an end goal lurking in the background, but the enjoyment comes from experimentation — nudging, tweaking, seeing what happens. Music Mouse is a reliable foil for that discovery process.
Compared to a modern theory tool like Scaler, Music Mouse doesn’t do all that much, but that’s kind of the point. Rather than overwhelm the user with options, it gives you a defined and relatively simple system, and lets you explore it.
It feels more like a toy than a tool, but not in a bad way, and its relatively low price makes it worth a punt, especially once combined with your DAW’s integrated MIDI tools and virtual instruments.
I’m left pondering: how much of the artistic process can we delegate to a machine before the result is no longer our own?
Speaking in a 1987 demo, Spiegel might have the right answer: “That’s the trick. It’s deciding what things should be reserved to the individual’s control at all times, and which things can be usefully automated, and yet to never do so in a way that deprives a person altogether of control.”
The question isn’t whether we use tools to assist creativity — we always have. It’s how much of the decision-making we’re willing to give up along the way.
With Music Mouse, you’re still doing the bulk of the creative work, still making choices, still shaping the outcome. Four decades on, in an era where tools have almost entirely collapsed the distance between input and output, Spiegel’s software remains a compelling example of where the line should lie.
Key Features

Play up to 4 voices with just your mouse
6 scale presets
Parallel or contrary motion options
Transpose playing range on the fly
10 arpeggiator-style patterns
2 switchable tempos
Staccato, half legato, and legato articulations
Independent MIDI channel for each voice
Built-in FM-style synth with 32 presets and basic controls
Send MIDI to the DAW or external instruments

The post Eventide Music Mouse review: The rodent collaborator I never knew I needed appeared first on MusicTech.

“The Prophet-5 set the standard for how it’s done today… but there are other ways”: Why the UDO DMNO might just change the polyphonic landscape as we know itUnidentified Dancing Objects. That is what the letters ‘UDO’ stand for— and here I was calling it ‘yew-dough’ all this time. “It was my brother Magnus who came up with the name,” laughs company founder George Hearn, speaking from his base in Bristol. “We wanted a name that was quite nice and simple, maybe an acronym. It has a playful meaning. Because we make playful instruments, essentially.”
That they do: since unveiling the Super 6 at Berlin’s Superbooth in 2019, the Hearn brothers’ company has risen at a dizzying pace to become one of the UK’s premier synthesiser developers. This spring, UDO brings us its fifth instrument: the DMNO. An eight-voice two-part multitimbral polysynth, the DMNO is as much a love letter to the music that started it all for Hearn as it is a bold foray into brand new territory.
The UDO DMNO on the MusicTech Cover. Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
With two independent four-voice analogue-hybrid synths, each equipped with UDO’s new Dynamic Multi-Core Stereo VCF, its eight different Play Modes facilitate all sorts of dynamic interactions between the synth’s two layers— or halves, if you like. There’s a slew of onboard effects and performance features, a formidable Binaural Mode for immersive stereo imaging and a rather gorgeous keyboard to boot.
It might seem like a daunting array of functions, but UDO’s design philosophy is as much about limitation as it is about freedom. With the sheer amount of possibilities available to synth developers in 2026, there has never been more emphasis on the decision-making of the designer.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“That is UDO!” exclaims Hearn. “That is why we exist as a company. Our whole idea is that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It’s about having something that says: ‘Do you really need this? Do you really need that?’”
“Very rarely do you need all of everything, all at once,” he argues. “Most of the time, you just want a lot of something to do a particular thing. Making a game out of that ‘resource-puzzle’ is, I think, enjoyable. But I also think it leads to more creativity.”
Hearn comes from an impressive design background. Over the course of his career, he’s worked on high-stakes designs for surgical, industrial and aerospace equipment. “I also had a stint working for a Formula One team,” he recalls breezily. Looking at UDO’s catalogue and its somewhat off-kilter approach to design, such a varied resume comes as little surprise. It follows that throughout our conversation, Hearn is far keener to talk about his favourite music than he is about his favourite synths.
“UDO’s whole idea is that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”
He pinpoints the period of 1991 to 2005 as his “musical upbringing”. “I was really into bands like The Prodigy, but also listening to lots of psy-trance, acid techno and indie dance music. When I was making the DMNO, I wanted to make an instrument that captured some of that rawness and that roughness of 90s dance music and indie dance music. I wanted to make something that could make squealing guitar noises and feedback and some of those classic Prodigy, Apollo 440, Chemical Brothers-type sounds of the era, which was just so massive.”
As for the song that got him into electronic music and into synthesisers, he recalls hearing John Peel spin On The Wires Of Our Nerves by the band Add N To (X). “That’s still in my head— the organic niceness of it!” he exclaims. “I’m desperately trying to get to the sounds that are in my head, and I still haven’t quite got there. But every time I get a little bit closer or try a different angle, it’s a little bit better. And something interesting happens.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
It’s no wonder that the DMNO has the distinctive feel of a synth from another era, not least helped by its deployment of an electroluminescent glass vacuum fluorescent display in its screen— a technology that is, by many standards, rather dated.
“It’s like the screens you see in Alien,” Hearn agrees, nodding to the cathode ray tube (CRT) screens which he calls a “big version” of what’s in the DMNO. “Phosphor glows a very particular colour, so even though it’s a digital display, it has an analogue feel to it. The brightness isn’t completely uniform and it shimmers slightly. It has a sort of imperfect-ness to it, while also being really crisp and and long-lasting, and having a really high viewing angle. And it works at absurd temperature ranges. Not that that’s any use, of course, because the rest of the synth probably wouldn’t work at minus 60 degrees. But the screen would!”
It didn’t take long after its announcement for the DMNO’s aesthetic design to garner comparisons across the blogosphere and in forums to Oberheim’s early polyphony-adopter, 1975’s iconic Two-Voice. Like the DMNO’s twin-synth design, the Two-Voice comprised two of Oberheim’s monophonic Synthesiser Expansion Modules to achieve its polyphony, much like the Four-Voice and Eight-Voice that followed it. What was it about the Two-Voice that provided such inspiration for the DMNO?
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“I wanted to look at the evolutionary ‘dead branches’ of polyphonic synthesis— before the [Sequential] Prophet-5 came along— to find the new gold standard of how to do it,” answers Hearn. “People tried all sorts of things. There was the Two-Voice, there was the Four-Voice and Eight-Voice from Oberheim… There were various sorts of paraphonic technology types. There was your Korg PS-series synths, which had a complete synth for every key on the keyboard… All these different approaches. And I wanted to see if there was a dead branch that had died just because the Prophet-5 killed it. Because the Prophet-5 set the standard for how it’s still done today…But there were other ways of doing it.”
It was while foraging for said dead branches that the Hearns realised the Two-Voice “just seemed like the logical one to look at…Here is a synth that was made like that simply because they had the SEM, and it was possible to get two voices out of a keyboard and then a digital scanned version, and you could put them together,” explains George. “It was quite groundbreaking, but it wasn’t necessarily designed to be like that, and there are lots of frustrations trying to set up individual SEMs to follow the same voice if you want to play a traditional polyphonic sound. So the DMNO comes along and says, ‘Right: let’s take some of those curiosities and that fun, and let’s make that central to it.’ So it looks like a Two-Voice— but it’s nothing like it!”
“The job of hardware, in my estimation, is not to compete on features with software…. It’s to give you that immediacy and sense of play”
Indeed, the DMNO might have a distinctly Oberheim-ish look on first impression (and one can’t but assume UDO have consciously leant further into this with the DMNO’s cream finish) but from the moment you switch it on it’s clear that this is a different beast entirely. Creative and playful, yet deadly serious; it’s an instrument, explains Hearn, that trades in immediacy and tactility.
“That’s really that’s where the fun comes from– and the muscle memory,” says Hearn. “You can make a really great sound without doing too much.”
Where the DMNO really shines– and I daresay cements its monumental contribution to the synth landscape in 2026– is in its unwavering commitment to the hardware format as an approach to making music. The DMNO doesn’t promise everything. But nor is anything missing.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“The job of hardware, in my estimation, is not to compete on features with software— which will always have more features,” says Hearn “It’s to give you that immediacy and sense of play. To allow you to get into that kind of flow state.”
Hearn remains shrewd as he reflects on the DMNO’s journey from conception to completion. A synth is, after all, a mosaic of components whose true form is almost impossible to discern until a relatively late stage in its development.
“At the end of the day, it’s just a bunch of parts,” he says, matter-of-factly. “It’s a bunch of oscillators and it’s a bunch of circuits and capacitors and filters, and you stick them all together and hope that all of these thousands of little decisions you’ve made throughout the course of designing something will gel together and work. Because they might not!”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
It’s clear to see, though, that UDO’s first step beyond the Super range is a confident one that has paid off. Instead of trying to outperform its predecessors, the DMNO brings a new set of capabilities and— just as importantly— a new set of limitations to the UDO catalogue. “The DMNO has a different sonic character to all of the Super instruments,” explains Hearn. “Does it sound better or worse? Well, you can’t make a DMNO have that really pleasing, warm and clean sound that you can get from a Super 6. But you can’t make a Gemini or a Super 6 squeal and distort, the way you can with the DMNO. They’re different.”
Certainly the immediacy, playfulness and tactility of the DMNO is enough to set it apart from the rest of the UDO catalogue– if not from many other synths we’re likely to see this year. Moreover, those qualities are clearly foundational to Hearn’s overarching philosophy of synthesis in general.
“I think music technology has a problem with admitting to itself what it’s all about,” he says. “And it’s about enjoyment, isn’t it? And play. And enjoying music. Enjoying creativity!”
Words: Vincent Joseph
Photography: Simon Vinall
The post “The Prophet-5 set the standard for how it’s done today… but there are other ways”: Why the UDO DMNO might just change the polyphonic landscape as we know it appeared first on MusicTech.

Everyone is navigating AI security in real time — even GoogleWe're in the transition period -- all of us.

Buterin fires back at Ethereum Foundation critics, recommits to neutralityThe Ethereum Foundation holds less than 1% of all ETH in circulation while other protocol foundations typically hold 10-50% of their native token's supply, the founder said.

NoiseCloud: Storing Data On YouTubeStorage is expensive these days, whether you’re looking at the prices of spinning rust or magic little sticks of silicon. But what if there was some benevolent overlord that you could trick into giving you unlimited storage? That’s where Noisecloud comes in.
Created by [Lucas], Noisecloud is a tool that lets you use YouTube as a form of effectively-unlimited file storage. It works by taking whatever file data you have on hand, and turns it into frames of digital noise that can be stored and transported as an MP4 file and uploaded to YouTube. The encoding process involves first compressing the data with gzip, then packaging it into a high-constrast series of video frames that are then encoded with FFmpeg. Video containers can be produced in various resolutions, all the way down to 640×360 @ 30 fps. There’s also a special “TikTok mode” which is optimised to best preserve data on short form sites that use vertical orientation as default. More commentary from the creator is available via the supporting article on Github.
It’s probably not a practical way to store your files, given the fussy encoding and decoding required to actually use the data. However, it’s an interesting proof of concept that explores how data can be stashed in unexpected places via publicly-accessible services. We’ve explored similar work before, too.

AXYZ Innovations AXYZAXYZ is a psychoacoustic spatial mixing interface that maps your entire mix into a 3D universe in real time, based on David Gibson's Art of Mixing doctrine. Place one instance on every track, one on the master. Each sound source becomes a planet position driven by spatial analysis. The master instance shows your full session as a solar system. Every planet moves with the audio in real time. Features: — 3D spatial field control — Psychoacoustic Spatial Mixing Engine — Multi-instance master/slave sync — AOM-conscious transparency system — Post-fader architecture — Resizable interface. Formats: VST3, AU, AAX OS: macOS (Apple Silicon native + Intel) · Windows 10+ 64-bit (VST3). PRICING: Rent-to-own — Intro $12/mo · Standard $20/mo · Pro $30/mo. Perpetual - Intro $199 · Standard $399 · Pro $599. Read More

The Bob Moog Foundation’s Minimoog raffle The Bob Moog Foundation are currently running a fundraising raffle for a brand-new Bob Moog Tribute Edition Minimoog Model D (serial number 001), valued at $3999. 

Analysts forecast a Bitcoin crash to the $60K level, revisiting 2026 lowThe price of Bitcoin is about $75,800 at the time of publication, a nearly 40% decrease from the all-time high of about $126,000 reached in October 2025.

SolarSquare in talks to raise up to $60M as India’s rooftop solar market draws major VC interestSolarSquare could be valued at up to $500 million in the financing expected to close next month.

Passive Bug Zapper Tracks Its Kill CountIf it’s summer in a warm, humid climate, bugs can be the bane of your existence. A natural solution is to place a passive bug zapper to catch bugs at night. But what if that isn’t fancy enough? [Nicolas Boichat] spices it up with a passive bug zapper that tracks its kill count.
But how exactly do you detect a bug zap? With an antenna, of course! When a bug gets caught, it arcs, creating an electromagnetic pulse. A small loop antenna on the backside of the zapper receives the signal.

The final PCB, attached to the bug zapper.
It was also in part an experiment to see how good you can “vibe-EE” and, well, mixed results. Claude was able to correctly identify basic concepts of EE needed here, but was largely worthless at making schematics. After some manual circuit doodling, then building, [Nicolas] successfully got an ESP32-C6 to detect the voltage spikes.
Of course, where there’s data, there must be a dashboard. Using existing graphing libraries and a custom PCB, [Nicolas] has the ultimate bug zapping experience.
We’ve covered a similar idea in the past, namely one based on current sensing.

IK Multimedia reveal ReSing Voices Japanese Pack ReSing Voices Japanese Pack includes 10 new vocal models which the company say marks an important step in ReSing's evolution toward a global ecosystem for voice creation, and marks the first in a series of releases covering additional languages.

Blue Origin cleared to fly New Glenn mega-rocket after April mishapJeff Bezos' rocket company confirmed an engine failure led to the loss of an AST SpaceMobile satellite last month, but offered little detail.

Logic Pro reverb plugins: 3 stock options and when to use them
Learn about when and how to use ChromaVerb, Space Designer, and Quantec Room Simulator, three of the most popular stock Logic Pro reverb plugins.

Guitar Center Launches Folk-Roots Line Mitchell Silver CreekGuitar Center announced on Thursday that it has "launched the Mitchell Silver Creek Folk Instrument Line, a game-changing seven-piece collection of high-quality instruments including banjos, mandolins and resonator guitars at price points accessible to a wide range of players. Mitchell looked toward the historic icons, developing a collection that meets high standards for quality and playability."

“With the new Mitchell lineup, we focused on creating instruments that feel inspiring and effortless to play from the very first note,” Rich Thrush, Vice President of Mitchell, told MC. “These instruments combine thoughtful design, dependable quality, and player-focused refinement to deliver an experience that keeps musicians engaged, growing, and coming back to play.”

According to a statement, "Mitchell has built player-focused acoustic instruments under Guitar Center's leadership since the brand’s formation in 1986. This line extends that legacy to a wider range of acoustic musicians and leans into Mitchell’s promise of high-quality instruments with great playability. The collection was built to meet that standard, using the finest instruments in the category as its benchmark throughout design and production."

“These instruments were built to the quality and performance standards of the most iconic instruments available today, but to also be affordable by real, working musicians,” said Gabe Dalporto, CEO of Guitar Center.

“We looked toward the historic icons of folk instruments and re-imagined them with our own design for playability, consistency, and modern relevance,” said Thrush. “The goal was to build instruments that feel and respond like they cost twice as much.”

Collection Overview (courtesy of Guitar Center):

Banjos

RB100 Resonator 5-String Banjo ($349.99): Traditional resonator banjo built for strong projection and bright, focused tone. Clear articulation and forward presence suited for bluegrass and ensemble playing.

OB100 Open Back 5-String Banjo ($249.99): Open-back banjo delivering warm, mellow tone with natural decay and balanced volume. Ideal for folk, old-time and acoustic settings where nuance and feel are central.

Mandolins

FM200 F-Style Mandolin ($349.99): F-style mandolin with carved arched top and solid spruce construction. Strong projection, crisp articulation and the classic response that bluegrass and traditional acoustic playing demand.

AM100 A-Style Mandolin ($169.99): A-style mandolin with arched spruce top and balanced body design. Even projection and clear, consistent tone suited for folk, Americana and ensemble work.

DM200E Double Cut Acoustic-Electric Mandolin ($299.99): Modern double-cut acoustic-electric mandolin with hollow carved Okoume body and onboard electronics. Expanded fret access and flexible performance across stage and studio environments.

Resonator Guitars

RR200CE Resonator Guitar ($429.99): Spider-style acoustic-electric resonator guitar with strong projection, sustained response and clear articulation. A sweet-sounding humbucker pickup with volume and tone controls for versatility in live and studio settings.

RR100 Resonator Guitar ($349.99): Biscuit-style resonator guitar with mahogany construction delivering punchy, dry tonal character with quick decay and strong midrange presence. Rooted in traditional blues and folk.

The collection is available exclusively at Guitar Center stores nationwide and at guitarcenter.com.The post Guitar Center Launches Folk-Roots Line Mitchell Silver Creek first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.