PC and Music News

Mellodrama, a documentary by Dianna Dilworth, explores the rising and falling fortunes of the Mellotron - the first musical keyboard to "sample" the sounds of other instruments - from its birth in a California garage in the 1950s, through its dominance on concert stages in the 1970s, through its almost religious cult of followers in the 2000s.

From the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" to Black Sabbath to Kanye West, Mellodrama is a 50-year odyssey of musical invention, revolution, betrayal, and rediscovery.

The Mellodrama DVD is available at a price of $24.95.

Applied Acoustics Systems releases the Ultra Analog VA-1 v1.1.3 Update for Mac OS X and Windows. This is a maintenance update containing the following changes:

• Authorization now works with non-admin user accounts;
• Fixed browser focus crash on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard;
• Fixed drag-and-drop in Logic 9 but now have a separate edit window;
• Fixed MIDI Links behavior on On/Off buttons;
• Fixed random crash on preset change;
• Fixed loading plug-in parameters glitch in projects saved with v1.0.0 of Ultra Analog VA-1.

The Ultra Analog VA-1 v1.1.3 Update is available now, free of charge to all Ultra Analog VA-1 registered users.

Pettinhouse has released AcousticGuitar FREE, a Stereo Steel-strings Acoustic Guitar sample library for Kontakt (2+) coming directly from its "big Brother" AcousticGuitar. Like the full library it is recorded in stereo with microphones and it has round-robin for alternate notes, full sustain, natural decay.

Details:
• 16-bit / 48Khz dry stereo samples.
• 315 dry samples recorded with mics.
• Full sustain.
• Natural decay (no loops).
• Round-robin for alternate picking.
• Fret noises.
• Noise releases.

Differences:
• AcousticGuitar FREE includes just one of the patches from AcousticGuitar FULL. It includes the Finger patch while AcousticGuitar FULL consists of two other patches: Pick and Strumming.
• AcousticGuitar FREE doesn't hav ...

The SoftStep foot controller is the alternative to bulky and limited footswitches used by musicians today. The latest innovation from Keith McMillen Instruments (KMI) weighs in at just over a pound, fits into many laptop cases, and boasts ten keys, each with 5 degrees of freedom.

MOTU has released BPM 1.05 and Electric keys 1.0.2.

If you own either one (or both), you can download the free updaters (for Mac or Windows). These maintenance updates introduce many enhancements, including 64-bit native operation under Windows 7 and Vista.

BPM 1.0.5 also introduces several exciting new features, such as a new arpeggiator, beat slice editing and performance optimizations.

For complete details about each update, refer to the download description and update Read Me documentation.

Camel Audio has updated their sample manipulation synthesizer Alchemy to v1.12 and released a new set of samples and presets for the Factory library as part of the Group Buy bonuses.

This update includes many new features and bug fixes including improved Cameleon preset import, playback position indicators for all editors, the performance octave switch remains active when changing presets for easy key switching between remix snapshots, equal power cross-fading between sources, increased zoom levels for some editors, improved skinning and numerous other improvements. This version of Alchemy no longer requires the main Alchemy key file as the users registration details are now encrypted and embedded directly in to the Alchemy binary file for improved security and protection.

The first ...