Liquid Saxophone and Liquid Electric Bass Due in March

Liquid Saxophone (Click for a close-up)

Liquid Electric Bass (Click for a close-up)

Licensing the technology behind Celemony Software's Melodyne, Ueberschall is developing a completely new family of flexible VST instruments. The first instruments in this truly VSTi series are the 'Liquid Saxophone' and 'Liquid Electric Bass', which are expected to be on sale for $199 US (169 euros) in March.

The Liquid Player is not only capable of playing back audio phrases and licks but also allows you to edit them using Melodyne's unique function set, matching the tempo of a phrase automatically to that of the sequencer, for example, or to its tonality or mode.

In addition, every note in a phrase can have its pitch, timing or duration modified - whether this means the correction of minor errors of intonation or the radical reshaping of the phrase, discreet quantization or 100% time-stretching. In this way, the phrases can be adapted to a vast range of musical contexts and used creatively.

Each Liquid instrument comes stocked with over a gigabyte of phrases and licks played by studio musicians. The samples are recorded without effects or any dynamic processing whatsoever, leaving you a completely free hand to apply whatever processing or effects you like later

The first Liquid instruments, the Liquid Saxophone and the Liquid Electric Bass, should reach the US market in March 2005, where they will retail at $199 US (169 euros). They are being distributed world-wide by Best Service (US distributors: Eastwest). Liquid electric guitars and trumpets are expected to follow in the early summer.