Eventide releases modernised version of Laurie Spiegel’s Music Mouse

Eventide has created an updated version of Music Mouse for modern computer systems.

The modernised version of the program can run on Mac 10.14+ (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Windows 11. It can be used on its own, directly from the computer, and can now play right in your preferred DAW.

The new version, Music Mouse 2.0, contains expanded sound presets drawn from composer and technologist Laurie Spiegel’s original DX7 and TX7 patches. It can also now sync to an external MIDI clock and can lock to a DAW, hardware or notation program, and it has clearer visual feedback around the Polyphonic Cursor. Version 2.0 also has optional UI guides, a hint bar and a scalable interface. As well as this, the new version also contains left or right-handed layout options.

“Music Mouse orients you to think on a slightly larger scale of the phrase or the gesture,” Spiegel told fellow composer Frank J. Oteri in a 2014 interview. “Of course, you can still wander around, making a mess for a really long time. We’ve all done that. But it’s an improvising instrument, and it’s a brainstorming instrument.”

Spiegel originally created Music Mouse in the mid-‘80s. The program turned the humble mouse into a digital musical instrument by using mouse position to determine what sound is generated.

“When Laurie first described Music Mouse to me, I realised how it stood apart. The emerging tech of the mid ‘80s was focused on adding effects or creating new sounds. Laurie’s idea was neither; it was different. She imagined using the computer as an intelligent musical tool that could be ‘trained’ to accompany and enrich a musician’s performance. She was light years ahead of her time,” said Tony Agnello, first engineer at Eventide. “A new generation of Music Mouse is long overdue and it’s my honour to have helped breathe new life into Laurie’s creation."