Little Ferry, NJ (February 18, 2026)—Eventide has released a new version of Music Mouse, a program developed 40 years ago by composer and technologist Laurie Spiegel that turned the mouse into a versatile musical instrument.
In the mid-80s, as personal computers entered more and more homes, Spiegel wanted them to make imagination-expanding sound. With Music Mouse, a flick of the wrist or a sweep of the hand could generate chords, melodies and arpeggios on a user’s Atari, Amiga or early Macintosh computer.
The updated Eventide version of Music Mouse.
The updated Eventide version of Music Mouse.
Eventide has updated the re-released Music Mouse for modern systems; Music Mouse can run on Mac 10.14+ (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Windows 11. The software, then and now, uses mouse position to determine what sounds a device generates. It can be used on its own, directly from the computer, and can now play right in a user’s preferred DAW.
“When Laurie first described Music Mouse to me, I realized how it stood apart,” reflects Tony Agnello, first engineer at Eventide. “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. A new generation of Music Mouse is long overdue and it’s my honor to have helped breathe new life into Laurie’s creation.”
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New in Eventide’s version is the ability to perform live or record music into a DAW or music notation software. Music Mouse now also syncs to an external MIDI clock and can lock to a DAW, hardware or notation program. Expanded built-in sound presets have been drawn from Laurie Spiegel’s original DX7 and TX7 patches. The new version offers clearer visual feedback around the Polyphonic Cursor, with optional UI guides, hint bar and scalable interface, and with left- or right-handed layout options.
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Spiegel’s music draws on her classical training, but she is also a computer programmer, software designer, visual and video artist and a published theorist. She recoginized for her pioneering work with several early electronic and computer music systems, and her realization of Johannes Kepler’s Harmony of the Planets was sent into space as the opening cut of the Voyager spacecraft’s record, Sounds of Earth (1977).
Mix Staff
Tags ⋅ Eventide ⋅ laurie Spiegel ⋅ music mouse