WaveDNA has introduced Liquid Music for Live, a new plugin for Ableton Live 9 using Max for Live that lets you create beats, chord progressions and melodies, using a set of powerful compositional tools.
Here is the official Liquid Music for Live intro video:
Features:
- Paint melodies, harmonies and chords using the Sketch tool
- Make beats using a collection of rhythmic building blocks
- Tweak and evolve song ideas in real-time using five layers of control
- Fully integrates with Ableton Live Suite or Ableton Live with Max for Live
- Choose a synth track, and Liquid Music automatically displays the harmony toolset.
- Select a Drum Rack track, and Liquid Music supplies a set of beat sequencing tools
Liquid Music separates music into five layers, each with unique tools you can tweak and customize to morph and evolve your music:
- Sketch is where all the layers come together into one intuitive musical shape. Click and drag to create original harmonies, spark new song ideas and draw the shape of your music.
- Key determines your track’s “mood.”
- Liquid Music’s Chord Suggester can recommend complimentary chord changes that help you build progressions. The Chord Sequencer is like a drum sequencer for chords. Just choose or randomize a chord, and a list of complimentary chords helps you arrange your song quickly and easily.
- The Voice layer helps to add harmony to melodies and chords. You can import a melody and use the Voice Layer to add harmony, create cascading arpeggios and even customize how thick the harmonies are for specific parts.
- Rhythm includes a host of tools based on WaveDNA’s Liquid Rhythm software. You can experiment with new beats and customize their note duration, velocity, timing and more. Rhythm mode lets you create beats using an extensive list note patterns and clusters—entire bars at a time.
Liquid Music For Live is available now for $129 US. You can also upgrade to Liquid Music from Liquid Rhythm for $59 US.
Reminds me a lot what Garageband on iOS has to offer.
pure crappy music
I’m going to try and defend this sorta thing. The ability for amateurs to make music has exploded in recent times. Creating our own timbres, patches, fx combos and so on has never been this affordable and convenient. As a result people are dipping their feet into music making from new directions. That’s what this is. In the past you would have to work your way through a lot of knowledge before you could start creating custom sounds, now you can learn from a different direction.
You wouldn’t get upset with somebody learning scales and chords using a keyboard’s default presets, so try to encourage people who are excited by sound design to start here.
Besides… I–V–vi–IV… wow I wrote a song… I’m such a musician…
I’d feel like I was cheating using this to write music for me.
I just spit up in my mouth a little bit.
No seriously, I think this will be a very useful tool for some folks, and could be welcomed into a certain kind of creative process. The role of the artist is perhaps a little more passive, passing judgement on each idea: “Yes, ok, no, no, no, ok, um… maybe.” And it becomes a little more like a needle-drop library, but where you get to claim the ideas as your own. That’s ok I guess.
Not my idea of fun at all, but to each his/her own.
I have to admit as someone whose strength lies in sound design and rhythm creation, a tool like this is awfully tempting for helping to create melodies. I can definitely see why some would call it cheating but some made the same claims about DAWS, MIDI, pattern editors and other tools in their early days.
In the end the human still has to decide HOW to use the tool and their is still plenty of creativity in that process.
Because there isn’t enough uninspired music out there already.
90% of music is uninspired (Sturgeon’s Law) — but there’s no particular reason that this software would be to blame. The results are dependent on the individual using it.
Of course, the software is only part of the problem of uninspired music.
What most software does (and this is no exception) is that it uses formulas for what is tried and true.
Arguably this software, (and I could just tell this based on the demo) will probably bring together some unique combinations of chord progressions, weird arpeggio shapes, and melodic ideas. That’s ok.
For the complainers, did you have chord book or reference chart back in the day? These days, there’s stuff like this, YouTube, etc. Let people learn and enjoy themselves while making music, instead of being a fogie meaninglessly reminiscing about nothing.
Tried it, won’t work… tried to debug, still didn’t work. So I took my chord book and reference chart and went on with my life.
“Paint a melody and Liquid Music puts all the notes in the right places”. “Browse through dozens of song presets”.
This is a computer application with pre-programmed partial or full sequences of music, “writing” music for you.
For the record: I learned music through chord references and studied chord progressions and music theory, while actually playing real instruments instead of copy-pasting loops. The process of trial and error makes you develop your voice as a musician, the unexpected results of your learning process lead to surprises and originality.
The process of letting a computer fill in the blanks of what you can’t accomplish as a composer… makes you let a computer write the music for you. According to pre-existing presets of what harmony and rhythm should sound like.
So yeah, this is cheating. Period.
Not that it’s anything new. Most hip-hop and EDM is produced through cheating, by resorting to pre-prackaged loops and samples of pre-existing music. This just makes it easier for non-musicians to disguise their lack of ability and creativity.
Anyway, don’t take my word for it. Just listen to what famous Luddite Squarepusher has to say:
http://www.qthemusic.com/15064/squarepusher-introduces-the-first-material-from-his-new-project-shobaleader-one-exclusive/
“I reckon since [the 1990’s] electronic music has itself become well acquainted with inertia and conservatism (and possibly also smarminess and tepidity). Software companies, partly in order to further their business aims, have made it so easy to make electronic music that the format in general is beginning to assume a troubling air of painting-by-numbers pointlessness. ”
Now, you can keep delude yourselves thinking you are actually accomplishing something, and the current trends and pop culture idolizing non-musicians (EDM, hip-hop, etc.) allows it. But remember: at the end of the day you are not real musicians. You are just pressing buttons that trigger samples and algorithms. Granted, you have a large audience that will sing your praises (the EDM and clubbing crowd, advertising music execs), but everyone else will know what’s going one and just carry on following real musicians.