PC and Music News

SoundsDivine has announced the release of 'Joy Of Sound' for U-he's ACE synthesizer. This new bank contains 130 new sounds for U-He's ACE, featuring punchy basses, overdriven analogue style sequences, modular mayhem, oriental instruments and deep rich pads. Most patches use modwheel and velocity assignments to make the sounds as expressive as possible.

Price : $25

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.