Recording - June 2014 - 50

WaveDNA Liquid Rhythm

for example, a simple tweak to one velocity/groove graph lets you affect all the
accents and leave everything else alone.
Hard to explain, hard to visualize at first, but
in a few minutes of playing around, you'll
quickly see how it works.

suggesting appropriate choices by shading different parts of the maps to guide
your choices. It gets really complex really
fast, and I admit that even after several
weeks of working with LR, it's the one part
of the program I have yet to fully grasp.

BeatWeaver and more
Okay so far? Now the going gets even
weirder; with the full version of LR, you get
many more Molecule Tools, including an
intelligent and controllable Randomizer, tools
for shuffling BarForms and and BeatForms
and moving bar lines around, and the
BeatForm Tumbler, where a set of nine MIDIassignable knobs lets you dial in new
BeatForms for each beat of a bar on the fly in
real time. And then there's BeatWeaver...
BeatWeaver is an ambitious attempt to
show you the whole scope of what LR can
do in one place. It offers two large circular
graphic displays, one displaying all the
possible BeatForms and another displaying all the possible BarForms; you can click
on various positions in the graphs to populate sequences of BeatForms and create
variations on your existing rhythms, with LR

Final thoughts
It's hard for me to suggest whether you
should buy the full version of LR or just
Intro. The vast majority of the really useful
tools are in Intro, and it takes a long time
to wrap your head around how
BeatWeaver does what it does. On the
other hand, some of the Molecule Tools in
the full version are too much fun to do
without, specifically the BeatForm Tumbler
and Randomizer. I recommend trying the
advanced features in the 30-day demo
version available from WaveDNA so you
can make an informed decision.
If you work in Ableton Live 9, a bidirectional communication protocol linking Live
with Liquid Rhythm, called Liquid Clips, exists
as a tool for any Live user who also has Max
For Live. As we went to press, version 1.3.4
of LR added support for mouse-free control of

Livid Instruments Base

Livid Instruments (lividinstruments.com) is in
the business of controllers. The firm offers a
number of controllers in all shapes and sizes,
plus a set of build-your-own tools for assembling custom controllers block by block:
some buttons here, some faders there, and
so on. They're all beautifully designed and
solidly built; I remember drooling with envy
over the Livid Ohm in Darwin Grosse's studio
on a visit some years ago, and being interested in the firm's designs ever since. With
the announcement of a $449 bundle that
combines Liquid Rhythm with the new Livid
Base controller, I've finally gotten my chance
to tell our readers about this wonderful band
of controller artisans and their most accessible offering yet.
50

RECORDING June 2014

Unlike the other Livid controllers to date,
which combine traditional faders, knobs,
encoders, pushbuttons and the like, the
Base has no moving parts. This tabletop
controller measures around 285 x 260 mm
(a bit over 11" x 10"); its sexy aluminum
casing with rubberized surface sports nine
touch-sensitive ribbon strips, eight touch-sensitive square "buttons", eight traditional
pushbuttons, 32 velocity and pressure sensitive drumpads in a 4 x 8 array, and a 2digital LED display for programming feedback. Every control is backed by multiple
LEDs to produce full-color illumination; the
square buttons have two LEDs for dual-state
display, the touchstrips can display where
they were last set, and even the traditional
pushbuttons have dual LEDs for multiple colors at once. It's a very beautiful box, and as
someone who constantly worries about
snapping off fader caps and knobs when
hauling boxes in and out of laptop bags, I
love its sleek design.
There's a web-based configuration editor for the Base; it takes some real searching on the Livid site to find a link to it, and
even more searching to find any sort of
instructions, but once you set it up (it
requires a free web plug-in called Jazz
that lets you transmit MIDI back and forth
to the browser), you can use any web
browser to edit what each surface or pad
does, set LED colors, etc.. The Base has a

LR via the Ableton Push control surface
(reviewed June 2013); we weren't able to
test it in time for our deadline, but we did get
to try LR with a Livid Base control surface (see
the mini-review in the sidebar) and found it a
worthwhile improvement to the LR workflow.
MIDI mapping can make a lot of LR's features easier and more fun to use, and I recommend exploiting it to the full extent of
what your controllers can offer.
If you're interested in just getting to realistic and highly usable rhythm tracks for your
songs in a hurry with as little fuss as possible, there are better choices out there. But if
you're interested in disassembling and
reassembling rhythms and tweaking them to
the nth degree, turning simple sounds into
amazingly intricate rhythmic statements... if
you're the sort of composer who's always
looking for that magical key to the ultimate
beat for the ultimate mix... you really need
to try the Liquid Rhythm demo.
Go slow and be patient at the beginning,
read the manual and watch the tutorial
videos, and you'll gradually get a sense for
what this program can do for your beats.
And then dive in-and don't be too surprised if you don't come up again for a long,
long time...
Prices: Liquid Rhythm, $129; Liquid
Rhythm Intro, $49
More from: WaveDNA,
www.wavedna.com

basic default set of MIDI instructions that
you can teach your DAW to follow, or
you can roll your own if you're feeling
ambitious.
You can see the Base in use with Liquid
Rhythm in a video on the WaveDNA site;
its scripting, which loads automatically
when LR sees the Base, lets you navigate,
change Accent Modifier settings, switch
BeatForms, and so forth, with very little
need for a mouse. If there's a downside,
it's very obvious in the video, where a
camera view of the Base reveals tiny
taped sticky-notes all over the controller to
help the user remember what each control
does! This is a downside of any generic
controller that doesn't have a built-in
"scribble strip" option; you need to learn
your way around by feel and memory
once you have the controller set up to
taste, and the layout might change as you
move from application to application.
But we can't fault the Base for being so
customizable! It's rugged, beautiful, plays
like a dream (the pads feel great), and
adding "scribble strips" would have significantly increased its price. As it is, it's
$429 direct from Livid for a controller
whose elegance and flexibility are hard
to match at any price... and the
WaveDNA bundle throws in a full copy of
Liquid Rhythm for a mere $20. How can
you lose?-MM

http://www.wavedna.com http://www.lividinstruments.com

Recording - June 2014

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