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.

Here is a great news found via GearSlutz : people who don't want to get the standard Waves bundles will soon have three new ways to buy Waves plug-ins :

"Ever wonder which plug-ins were used on your favorite recordings? Or which plug-ins a particular producer or engineer uses to get his sound? Now, you can make the artists' faves your Waves.

Artist Choice
Audio heavyweights Andrew Scheps, Gil Norton, Thom Russo, Ross Hogarth, and Scott Martin Gershin have each hand-picked a selection of the Waves plug-ins they just can't live without. And this is just the beginning, with many more artists to come.

Quick Choice
Now, choose any 5 plug-ins from selected groups to get the most bang for your budget. Know exactly how much you intend to spend? Quick Choice has the plug-ins for you.

Custom Choice
For the very first time, you can compile personalized collections of Waves plug-ins! Tailor your selections to suit your production needs—the exact plug-ins you want, no more, no less."

These offers should be available on Monday, February 8th.

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 ...

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.