It's been quiet round here lately

Apologies for that - we had a busy Summer having a life and not doing much with little Ella, but things are ramping up again now - watch this space, we are working on an artist special edition Tron. Like your own Rory Gallagher edition strat, but more electronic, and pocket-sized. Should be great.

You win some, you lose some ...

The win - Ellatron Lite : Orchestron went live in the App Store today! Lots of Ellatron goodness, in fact more Ellatron goodness than we squeezed into Ellatron Pro 1.0, all for $0.99

The loss - well, the defence let in 2 goals today. Well 4 - the same goal, 4 times. Bug in Ellatron, repeated across all 3 Lites as they share 99.99999% of the same codebase. So I need to get bugfixes into the store right now.

Ellatron Pro 1.41 is in review, no changes except to fix the annoying bug which stops chordbank save/restore from working. Now that Orchestron is live I will get a bugfix of her into the store toay, and as the other Lites go live I will update them with bugfixes.

So, we are losing 4-1 today. But it was a glorious goal we scored.

Three new 99c Ellatrons in review in the App Store

Today we expanded the Ellatron product range for the first time. We've had feedback that $2.99 is too much to pay for an excellent, rich, well-written synthesizer for the iPhone. Clearly we disagree! But to be fair, there are a whole bunch of music apps in the store, a lot of them useless, and $2.99 is a big punt if you don't know what you are going to get.

So to make it easier for the impulse purchasers, and to give people a taste of the Ellatron experience at the critical $0.99 price point, we are today introducing 3 variants of "Ellatron Lite" into the App Store. These are -

Organtron : 5 great organ sounds, tonewheel and 'transistor' voices

Orchestron : 5 orchestral themed voices, and is closest to the original Ellatron concept, allowing you to play with choirs, brass and strings. And finally -

Synthron : a set of analog-sounding synths and synth basses, plus the new fave the StellaPhone.

Each Ellatron Lite also comes with a taster of full Ellatron in the shape of the chamber string section of RiekoTron, plus the walloping Ellatron drum loops.

Each of these Lite version stands up on its own - the organ collection is a match for any other organ App in the store, the synth collection is excellent, and the Orchestron gives you the pocket Mellotron experience at a new, low, low price point.

So now there's no excuse to indulge in some Ellatronics! Go on - you know you want to ...

We anticipate the new Lite versions to be available for sale before August 1st, so long as we don't hit any Apple-shaped roadblocks ... watch this space!

Finally ...

... Ellatron 1.4 has hit the App Store.

Phew!

Rieko testing Ellatron

This weekend we managed to get all of team Ellatron into one room for the first time since Mellofest, and it gave Rieko her first real chance to sit down and play Ellatron - I snapped a few pics and this one turned out so nice I had to blog it. The formula is as follows - one musician plus one iPod plus OS 3.0 plus one Ellatron 1.4 plus one glorious sunny day equals one really Summery, Trontastic synth chill-out!

Ellatron version 1.4 is in review in the App Store

Exciting, eh?

So what are these new Tape Frames we see?

EllaCello - we heard that people just couldn't make our MelloStrings play notes that were low enough. A problem we understand round here, as we have bass guitars in Ellatron central. So EllaCello now becomes the proudest, bassest member of our tape frame family.

So StellaPhone - what's that all about? Well - have you ever thought "If only I had a Mellotron?" - what about - "If only I had a Stylophone AND a Mellotron - then I could play Space Oddity all on my own!". Madam, your wish is our command - say a big hi to StellaPhone!!!

Say hello to the Ellatron Remote Visualizer

Now this is *COOL* - doubleplusgood as we used to say in the 1980s - a program that runs on the Mac, connects up to a running copy of Ellatron on your iPhone/iTouch, and displays Ellatron - all keypresses, all controls, all changes to the display - so that you can project it on stage, and show the 100,000 at Wembley Stadium that you really are playing an instrument, not just doubled up and pulling faces trying to get through level 14 of Rolando while a backing track plays ...

Ellatron Version 1.3 is live in the App Store!

Young man, you too can play Strawberry Fields for Ella with just one finger and one thumb!

Chordbanks for all!!!

We are taking a week away from the Tron to decompress, and will be posting a 'How to drive version 1.3' video on our return. So play with the new interface, by next week you'll either be an expert or you'll be tearing your hair right out!

Strawberry Fields for Ella!

Decided to set myself a challenge today - as a non-pianist, could I successfully use Ellatron 1.3's chordbanks to help me play the intro to Strawberry Fields?

Answer - YES!!

Mellotron? There's an App for that!

Don't you love those Apple iPhone ads? We do. But we also wish we were in one of them ... so, in the absence of any offers from SteveCo, we made an ad ourselves.

Ladies, gentlemen and Mellotron heads of the world - we present -

"Mellotron? There's an App for that!"

Version 1.3 is now in review

Ellatron version 1.3, as demonstrated by Jordan Rudess in the 'Mellofest 2009' special video, is in review. The latest version features 16 chord banks, where a chord bank is effectively a 'song setting' consisting of 8 programmable chords on the pads and a pair of Tape Frames for the pads and lower manual. Plus - we have some great tonewheel organ sounds, bringing the organ collection up to 5 and the total number of Tape Frames up to 24! More gig-ready than ever, Ellatron remains the one 'must-have' synth for the iPhone.

Mellofest 2009!

The whole Ellatron team were at Mellofest 2009 at The Luminaire in Kilburn, and we had a fantastic time. We presented Ellatron, with a totally special 'Virtual Personal Appearance' by the amazing Jordan Rudess, we got to meet the marvelous Knox from the wonderful Vibrators, and to close the evening on a huge high the extremely talented Gary Go came to Mellofest to meet up with us.

A truly great event, we'll be posting videos on YouTube over the course of the next few days.

Best act of the night - I'd have to say Martin Orford, who was quite magnificent.

More from Mellofest on YouTube

Version 1.2 is complete

Phew! With testers, awaiting feedback, not expecting any problems, anticipate it entering review this week.

Ellatron 1.1 is live in the store!!

I know the excitement of version 1.2's new features has been a bit overwhelming recently, but in case you all forgot, 1.1 has been in review since about 1978 ... or that's how it feels. But now she has left review and became ready for sale!

To recap - better looping, more voices, and four new voices derived from actual Mellotron samples. Go grab the update!

And 1.1 is in for review!

Yay! Now - assuming it doesn't get rejected - all bound for MuMu Land. Otherwise known as Ellatron 1.2.

Version 1.1 features samples cooked by an all-new looping algorithm that has allowed me to reduce the length of some existing samples with no quality decrease, and therefore find room to squeeze in some additional samples, which - wait for it - have been actually sampled from a genuine Mellotron! We stuck with the old favourites, mixed choir, brass, strings and flute, and left the original EllaChoir etc. voices in place - so Ellatron now features a brain-melting 22 voices. How's that for $2.99!!

Version 1.1 is pretty much done!

But don't get too excited - the 'great new features' will now be rolled into version 1.2, version 1.1 features a *great* new voice, a refresh of some of the existing voices (REAL MELLOTRON SAMPLES folks!!) and all the 'Ella' family samples have been relooped with an all new looperizer for (in our ears) much nicer looped results.

So, definitely worthy of a refresh into the store, will test for a while and submit in the next couple of days.

Version 1.1 under development

There are some neat changes coming into version 1.1, but it's not going as quickly as we thought it would - the 3D underpinnings of the UI are having to be ripped out and reinstalled to introduce a couple of much-requested features, and to pave the way for the sequencer in version 2.

We will keep you posted ... but keep watching this space!

Ellatron is in the store!

Well, it's been a bit nail biting this week as little baby Ella was posted to the App Store a couple of weeks ago, and then had to be refreshed twice for reasons that were entirely our fault!

But now she's there - check her out at http://www.omenie.com/ellatron which has a link to the App Store if you want to spend $2.99 or £1.79. And if you do buy her, please leave feedback on the App Store, we'd love to hear from you, and we will work to make version 2.0 as good as it can possibly be.