Celemony Software has announced that it is licensing the technology behind its unique audio application Melodyne to the Hannover-based sample manufacturer, Ueberschall, which has used it to develop a completely new family of flexible VST instruments. The first instruments in this truly remarkable VSTi series are the Liquid Saxophone and Liquid Electric Bass, which will be on sale for $199 US (169 euros) in March.

The Liquid Player is not just 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.

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. When you’re working with audio, you can’t get any simpler and more flexible than that.

Each Liquid instrument comes stocked with over a gigabyte of phrases and licks played by renowned studio musicians; both musically and technically, these are raw materials of the highest quality. 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 phrases and licks provided are also ideal sample material for the normal version of Melodyne. Using the Melody Manager, you can integrate them simply and in a highly musical fashion into your own work.

The first Liquid instruments, the Liquid Saxophone and the Liquid Electric Bass, are scheduled for release in March 2005, and they will retail at $199 US (169 euros).