At Musikmesse Celemony Software and Ueberschall are presenting a series of highly original virtual instruments, each bearing the word 'Liquid' in the title. The first in the series is the Liquid Sax, which offers a multitude of saxophone phrases that you can adapt using the integrated Melodyne technology to create songs of your own. Further instruments are due to follow shortly.

Liquid Sax contains many hundreds of first-class saxophone phrases, the pitch, tempo and timing of which you can adapt to your own requirements using Melodyne's unique function set. The samples benefit from the exceptional sound quality of the Melodyne engine and nothing of the feel, expression or phrasing of the human performance is lost.

This was not the case in the past. Until now, all that was possible was the time-stretching or pitch-shifting of entire phrases and these were inevitably accompanied by artefacts and tonal discolouration. With the Liquid series, on the other hand, you can change even individual notes within a phrase at will, without this being in any way detrimental to the quality and character of the sound. This can even be done automatically - Liquid simply picks up the tempo from the sequencer and (as early as the auditioning phase) adjusts the files to fit.

Through the combination of first-class samples and the unique Melodyne functions, the phrases and licks can be combined in a myriad of ways and adapted to a wide range of applications. These can range from deft fills and licks to the creation of entire solos. The selection of samples covers all styles of music, playing techniques and tone colours. And there's more good news for Melodyne users: the samples can be loaded into Melodyne for additional editing.

The Ueberschall Liquid Sax VST instrument is due to start shipping in June and will be distributed worldwide by Best Service. It will cost around 159 Euros.