WaveDNA Liquid Rhythm and Liquid Music Bundle

[Larry Shelby]

$70.31 with code FORUM at JRR

https://www.jrrshop.com/wavedna-liquid-music-rhythm-bundle

[abacab]

I forgot that I had Liquid Rhythm. Time to re-visit for free!

[abacab]

Oops, it appears that Liquid Rhythm 1.4.5 (what I have) has been ended as a separate plug-in, and no longer maintained. I got a crash, and now it won't run at all. Guess now my options are to either get Liquid Music 1.7.0, or go home.

Home is where the heart is!
 

Quote

NOTE TO CUSTOMERS: This software, Liquid Rhythm 1.4.5, is offered as a legacy product and/or introductory path into Liquid Music (with upgrade purchase path available). However, this version of Liquid Rhythm has not been maintained for compatibility on newer platforms, and depending on your configuration you may run into problems.

Liquid Rhythm 1.4.5 is not compatible with Ableton Live 10 Suite or Live 11 Suite as a Max For Live Device (AMXD). Liquid Rhythm 1.4.5 VST/AU plugins are, however, still compatible in Live 10 and 11.

Liquid Rhythm 1.4.5 is not compatible on macOS Big Sur or on the Apple Silicon ARM64 chipset.

Liquid Rhythm 1.4.5 is compatible on macOS Catalina, though your usage compatibility may vary depending on the compatibility of your DAW(s), and may require further configuration for full compatibility; please write into support@wavedna.com if you run into any issues.

Liquid Rhythm is not available as an AAX plugin, only as RTAS, meaning that Liquid Rhythm is not supported as a plugin in Pro Tools 11 and higher (though the Liquid Rhythm standalone application may be used in conjunction with a Pro Tools session).

Your mileage may vary, though if you run into compatibility problems, we suggest giving Liquid Music 1.7.0 a try instead. Liquid Music contains an updated version of Liquid Rhythm, 1.7.0, alongside a suite of harmonic tools to accompany your rhythm toolset. Liquid Music's development branch will continue to see updates to ensure compatibility on the latest platforms.

We do not have plans to offer an updated version of Liquid Rhythm as a separate product at this time, due to some technical challenges in product separation, though we may reconsider this in the future.

 

Edited February 7, 2022 by abacab

[Fleer]

Any link with Liquid Notes?

[e-cue]

1 hour ago, abacab said:

Oops, it appears that Liquid Rhythm 1.4.5 (what I have) has been ended as a separate plug-in, and no longer maintained. I got a crash, and now it won't run at all. Guess now my options are to either get Liquid Music 1.7.0, or go home.

Home is where the heart is!
 

 

They do have an upgrade path.  https://shopify.wavedna.com/pages/liquid-rhythm-downloads  

Not sure if it's any better than this offering though.

[abacab]

1 hour ago, Fleer said:

Any link with Liquid Notes?

Nope. Liquid Music by WaveDNA and Liquid Notes were from two different companies. Liquid Notes was from Re-Compose.

[abacab]

31 minutes ago, e-cue said:

They do have an upgrade path. https://shopify.wavedna.com/pages/liquid-rhythm-downloads  

Not sure if it's any better than this offering though.

That link is for the unsupported legacy version that I already own, 1.4.5.

The upgrade from Liquid Rhythm to the Liquid Music bundle is $99 (includes Liquid Rhythm 1.7.0), which is what always stopped me.  I bought Liquid Rhythm 5 years ago. This $70 deal for the bundle is probably the best offer that I have seen. Please see their note to customers in prior post above. WaveDNA no longer plans to sell the updated Liquid Rhythm as a separate product. Bundled with Liquid Music only.

However the inventor of the WaveDNA technology, David Beckford, unfortunately passed away about 2 years ago. https://www.wavedna.com/david-joseph-beckford-co-founder-of-wavedna/

I think that it was a very innovative idea, as there are not many other options for pure algorithmic MIDI rhythm generators out there, that can drive your drum kits. Melda MDrummer appears to be the closest substitute that I can locate.

Edited February 7, 2022 by abacab

[Marc Cormier]

I have never hear of this and it looks amazing. 

[Zolton]

I'm a big fan of Liquid Rhythm and sincerely hope WaveDNA is able to continue developing and improving on the ideas, though losing David Beckford obviously puts that into question. Based on the news from their site, Liquid Music v1.7.0 was released in late 2019, before his death in mid-2020. I'm not sure whether the company has stated any specific plans for the future, but the software has some pretty cool and unique aspects, if you "click" with them.

For anyone interested in Liquid Rhythm, its greatest pain (for me) could turn out to be a huge advantage (again for me, or others who code a little). The software has a nice but smallish library of drum samples, with the ability to add your own. I tried that one at a time via the interface for a couple hundred (i.e., the "pain"), and it works okay, but is pretty tedious. Eventually, I discovered that these "instruments" you set up are stored in a pretty simple XML file, with the path info to the samples. I haven't tried it yet, but with a bit of creative fiddling, I suspect one could pretty easily drop in any number of samples with a list of file locations and a few lines of code to mimic the XML tags.

I happened to catch a wild Black Friday sale at BestService to get LiquidMusic for ~$35. At the time, I wondered if that was a final "unload the merchandise" sale for WaveDNA, so I'm happy to see they're still up and running, at least in some form. Unfortunately, while the sale was "can't resist" for me, I also had a few things I'd planned to bu around BF, and I haven't had much time to explore LM yet. It does work in a similar way as LR, at least superficially with the instruments and patterns, but there's definitely more to it. I'm looking forward to having a deep rabbit-hole dive into it one day soon.

[abacab]

1 hour ago, Zolton said:

For anyone interested in Liquid Rhythm, its greatest pain (for me) could turn out to be a huge advantage (again for me, or others who code a little). The software has a nice but smallish library of drum samples, with the ability to add your own. I tried that one at a time via the interface for a couple hundred (i.e., the "pain"), and it works okay, but is pretty tedious. Eventually, I discovered that these "instruments" you set up are stored in a pretty simple XML file, with the path info to the samples. I haven't tried it yet, but with a bit of creative fiddling, I suspect one could pretty easily drop in any number of samples with a list of file locations and a few lines of code to mimic the XML tags.

Even easier than tweaking the sounds in this app was to use the Liquid Rhythm plugin in Cakewalk (or almost any DAW) to sync the transport to the Liquid Rhythm standalone app.

You could then mute the sound generation in Liquid Rhythm and use your Addictive Drums kit in Cakewalk, or whatever drum sampler you choose, to play back the LR patterns in the DAW.

[Zolton]

34 minutes ago, abacab said:

Even easier than tweaking the sounds in this app was to use the Liquid Rhythm plugin in Cakewalk (or almost any DAW) to sync the transport to the Liquid Rhythm standalone app.

You could then mute the sound generation in Liquid Rhythm and use your Addictive Drums kit in Cakewalk, or whatever drum sampler you choose, to play back the LR patterns in the DAW.

An excellent point! I did just that with Battery 4 a few times, which opened up a large swath of sounds without any fancy effort. Probably the better way to go, for sane people who don't dream of converting a whole Sononym or Atlas 2 database into arcane XML for nerdy (but possibly wildly impractical) reasons.

[kitekrazy1]

13 hours ago, Zolton said:

I'm a big fan of Liquid Rhythm and sincerely hope WaveDNA is able to continue developing and improving on the ideas, though losing David Beckford obviously puts that into question. Based on the news from their site, Liquid Music v1.7.0 was released in late 2019, before his death in mid-2020. I'm not sure whether the company has stated any specific plans for the future, but the software has some pretty cool and unique aspects, if you "click" with them.

For anyone interested in Liquid Rhythm, its greatest pain (for me) could turn out to be a huge advantage (again for me, or others who code a little). The software has a nice but smallish library of drum samples, with the ability to add your own. I tried that one at a time via the interface for a couple hundred (i.e., the "pain"), and it works okay, but is pretty tedious. Eventually, I discovered that these "instruments" you set up are stored in a pretty simple XML file, with the path info to the samples. I haven't tried it yet, but with a bit of creative fiddling, I suspect one could pretty easily drop in any number of samples with a list of file locations and a few lines of code to mimic the XML tags.

I happened to catch a wild Black Friday sale at BestService to get LiquidMusic for ~$35. At the time, I wondered if that was a final "unload the merchandise" sale for WaveDNA, so I'm happy to see they're still up and running, at least in some form. Unfortunately, while the sale was "can't resist" for me, I also had a few things I'd planned to bu around BF, and I haven't had much time to explore LM yet. It does work in a similar way as LR, at least superficially with the instruments and patterns, but there's definitely more to it. I'm looking forward to having a deep rabbit-hole dive into it one day soon.

The reality is taking over someone's coding is far easier said than done.

With all of these other apps these days these are probably not replacements.  Both require demonized Java.  Java on a system is as annoying as popup ads. I have Liquid Rhythm and don't use it. 

[abacab]

2 hours ago, Paul Young said:

Both require demonized Java.  Java on a system is as annoying as popup ads.

I believe that you have confused Java virtual machine with the old Java browser plugin for web (which has been deprecated). Or Javascript, which has really nothing at all to do with Java, except an unfortunate name. The Java browser plugin was a lousy idea, a security risk, and it's use has mostly been eliminated. The Java browser plug-in was designed to allow the JVM to execute so-called Java applets embedded into HTML pages.

However, locally installed Java based music applications do not run in your browser. They just require a local Java virtual machine to execute them. The advantage to Java, is that it's write once, run anywhere (that has a platform supported JVM installed). As opposed to other application programs that must be compiled for each target platform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_virtual_machine

"A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describes what is required in a JVM implementation. Having a specification ensures interoperability of Java programs across different implementations so that program authors using the Java Development Kit (JDK) need not worry about idiosyncrasies of the underlying hardware platform."

A side note here is that native Android apps are written in Java, and is a requirement for the Android development kit. There is no reason to fear or avoid Java, except maybe you prefer not to have extra stuff installed on your computer.

[Eusebio Rufian-Zilbermann]

23 hours ago, abacab said:

Liquid Notes was from Re-Compose.

For additional reference, in case anyone missed it. The Re-Compose products were taken over by W.A. Production. Liquid notes was discontinued, and W.A. production sent an email with the details.  Josh (W.A. Production) reposted the email for us in this forum

 

[abacab]

29 minutes ago, Eusebio Rufian-Zilbermann said:

For additional reference, in case anyone missed it. The Re-Compose products were taken over by W.A. Production. Liquid notes was discontinued, and W.A. production sent an email with the details.  Josh (W.A. Production) reposted the email for us in this forum

 

Josh made 2 posts at the forums and never came back...

He needs to man up, like IK Peter!

[Fleer]

34 minutes ago, Eusebio Rufian-Zilbermann said:

For additional reference, in case anyone missed it. The Re-Compose products were taken over by W.A. Production. Liquid notes was discontinued, and W.A. production sent an email with the details.  Josh (W.A. Production) reposted the email for us in this forum

 

 I wrote them twice. No reply. Liquid notes indeed. Down the drain

[abacab]

40 minutes ago, Fleer said:

 I wrote them twice. No reply. Liquid notes indeed. Down the drain

I do understand the Re-Compose predicament, but the handoff for existing users of Liquid Notes to W.A. was rather a fumble...

[kitekrazy1]

6 hours ago, abacab said:

I believe that you have confused Java virtual machine with the old Java browser plugin for web (which has been deprecated). Or Javascript, which has really nothing at all to do with Java, except an unfortunate name. The Java browser plugin was a lousy idea, a security risk, and it's use has mostly been eliminated. The Java browser plug-in was designed to allow the JVM to execute so-called Java applets embedded into HTML pages.

However, locally installed Java based music applications do not run in your browser. They just require a local Java virtual machine to execute them. The advantage to Java, is that it's write once, run anywhere (that has a platform supported JVM installed). As opposed to other application programs that must be compiled for each target platform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_virtual_machine

"A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describes what is required in a JVM implementation. Having a specification ensures interoperability of Java programs across different implementations so that program authors using the Java Development Kit (JDK) need not worry about idiosyncrasies of the underlying hardware platform."

A side note here is that native Android apps are written in Java, and is a requirement for the Android development kit. There is no reason to fear or avoid Java, except maybe you prefer not to have extra stuff installed on your computer.

Nope

[abacab]

1 hour ago, Paul Young said:

Nope

Huh?

[sarine]

17 hours ago, abacab said:

I believe that you have confused Java virtual machine with the old Java browser plugin for web (which has been deprecated). Or Javascript, which has really nothing at all to do with Java, except an unfortunate name.

The name wasn't up to [mis]fortune as JavaScript was intended to complement Java as a scripting language.

 

17 hours ago, abacab said:

The Java browser plugin was a lousy idea, a security risk, and it's use has mostly been eliminated. The Java browser plug-in was designed to allow the JVM to execute so-called Java applets embedded into HTML pages.

Yes and JavaScript is a much more brilliant idea. Browsers run VM's that compile JavaScript to bytecode, just like a JVM. I think the main difference is that JavaScript VM's run inside the browser so escaping the sandbox lands you in the browser process with its privileges and you have to separately find and exploit vulnerabilities in the browser to gain higher privileges, whereas JVM is designed to provide all kinds of access to system resources (to facilitate useful applications) which grants the exploiter greater power if they're able to execute arbitrary code. Both are sandboxed and both have had vulnerabilities that allowed escaping the sandbox. Really, if there's an apt combination of words to describe current web technology with its duct-taped software stacks and high reliance on execution of client-side code written in a loosely typed language, then "a lousy idea" comes to mind.

 

17 hours ago, abacab said:

A side note here is that native Android apps are written in Java, and is a requirement for the Android development kit.

They aren't necessarily, and it isn't. Android runs its own VM (Dalvik) with its own bytecode that is fundamentally different from JVM's. The VM is language-agnostic so you can develop in any language provided that you have a compiler or a translator to produce the bytecode. Nowadays Android compiles its bytecode to native machine code for better performance.

 

18 hours ago, abacab said:

There is no reason to fear or avoid Java, except maybe you prefer not to have extra stuff installed on your computer.

Yes, except maybe. ?  When I'm browsing for software and I see the mention that it's written for a VM/interpreter, I browse elsewhere. Mostly because in some cases choosing to use a scripting or a heavily boiler-plated API compositing language reflects the developer's lack of work ethics which gives me less incentive to invest in something they built, but also because I'm averse to accumulating junk on my systems (I have separate, dedicated environments for bathing in mud). But the hackers and script-kiddies love the ultra-convenient scripting environments proliferating on casual users' computers.

 

10 hours ago, abacab said:

Huh?

Going by the bolded text, I think he meant to say he's not confused between JVM and browser Java applets.