Free soundpack from Native Instruments and a free Live Pack from Ableton

via CDM, NI have released a free soundpack for Kore Player (which is free also) or Kore 2.
There is also a 400MB free Live Pack from Ableton, and a few more from them here.

Squarepusher talks Fluxux

Read it here, or just look at the pictures.

Audio Damage's Automaton

Automaton is a VST / AU for stuttering and altering your music inside your DAW of choice. It's $49, and you can check out some examples of how it works on the Audio Damage website, or watch videos of it in action, such as these two from youtube:

Remix DJ Spooky's Antarctic Meltdown

You can read about DJ Spooky's Terra Nova project here. And then you can go to The Pool and download some pieces to remix.

Acid 7 to be released in November

via KVR, Sony Acid 7 is coming soon. The new features don't exactly scream "must upgrade" (apart from it working with Vista) but the beauty of Acid has always been it's lack of more features than you could ever need so you can get on with making music.
You can compare version 6 and 7 here.

Stylophone VST

The Stylophone has recently been recreated for the Ipod Touch (via CDM) but you can also get some free Stylophone VSTs such as these:


de la Mancha Styrofoam


Sparque Stylophone, and there is help here about installing it.

SoundCloud is open

SoundCloud is now open to the public, if you had a beta account then you now have a Pro account for a month, after that you will have to pay for the Pro account.

AudioSurf - Your Music Makes The (Race) Track

If you use Steam, you can download AudioSurf which is a racing game that uses the music you listen to create the race track you drive on. It costs $9.99, but there is a demo. There is more information about it on their website, also IGN review it here, they give it 8.6/10.

Pro Tools 8, now with added Sibelius!

CDM reports that Pro Tools 8 now has Sibelius intergrated. Personally I'm not interested in using Pro Tools, but I do wish all DAW's had notation.

The Conet Project

If you're looking for something interesting to sample check out The Conet Project. They've compiled recordings of numbers stations. You can get these as mp3s from the Internet Archive, there is also a pdf booklet. The official site is here.

Sputnik : Free circuit bending ensemble

Laptop Noise have a free circuit bending Reaktor ensemble called Sputnik which you can grab from there site. They also have another called Laptop Hell.

Also, Martin Brinkmann has a heap of free ensembles for Reaktor on his site.

Roland Emulators

Rebirth - 303, 808, 909
AudioRealism Bassline - 303
AudioRealism DrumMachine - 606, 808, 909
Tau Bassline MkII - 303
Arturia Jupiter-8V - Jupiter-8
TAL-BassLine - SH-101
TAL-U-No-62 - Juno 60
mini DrumZ - CR-78, 606, 727, 808, 909 (plus some Korg stuff too)
Superwave p8 - JP8000

Most of these are free or have free alternatives.

Free "mnml" loops and samples from mimu

mimu have a stack of free sound packs for those who need loops and samples to play with. There's glitchy stuff and circuit bending noises too.

DSK free VSTi's

I've mentioned them before but DSK have heaps of really great VST's. They even make specialist VSTi's, like this one for Asian instruments, and this one for Indian instruments.
There's another called Darkness Theory that sounds good, it's for making ambient music. But they've got everything from guitars and drums to a heap of different synths. They are all free too so well worth checking out.

FM give away 1000 Soundcloud invites

Future Music Mag are giving away 1000 soundcloud invites, get them here.

Free plugins from Audio Damage

Rough Rider is a free vintage compressor, and FuzzPlus is a free vintage fuzz pedal.

Free Drums for Abelton's Operator

Designer Drums has been out a while, you can listen to samples, or just download it as it's 2MB.

JamStudio

Wired has a small write ip about JamStudio which allows you to make music online and save it to play back later.

Wind Instrument

Found via TINAL, Damian Stewart has created a wind instrument with cameras monitoring grass movement and then running it through Pure Data to create music. It sounds amazing.

Darkware now freeware

I found this via ThisIsNotALabel, Darkware Studio is now freeware.