Custom Settings Allow for the Perfect Surprise with Liquid Rhythm’s Randomizer

The Randomizer is easily my favourite feature in Liquid Rhythm, and not just because I worked on it. As a non-drummer musician, I love to plug Liquid Rhythm into Ableton Live, and come up with new melodies by using the Randomizer on pitched notes instead of drum pads. Of course, the Randomizer’s also great for tom fills and a new pattern for your snare.

The name Randomizer is a bit of a misnomer. In the conception of the tool, we didn’t want to just generate random beats but good random beats. This meant giving the user control over which parameters were randomized. Should the contents of each beatform be shuffled while the overall rhythm stays the same? Should the overall rhythm change while the smaller element of the beat remain intact? Should the velocity of each note be randomized? Should we allow two tracks to have notes that overlap? Our end result was a panel full of checkboxes.

Two problems quickly surfaced. First, many of the options were difficult to explain in the short blurb next to a checkbox. Second, we had made the assumption that all of these settings should either be turned on or off, when music rarely works in such a black and white way. If the random tool included a way to adjust the level of randomness, it would be much more powerful.

We converted the check boxes into four sliders that each represented an aspect of the overall randomness. All options that changed the beatforms were grouped together under one slider. The same was done for barforms and velocity. Depending on your preferences, the sliders represent how much to deviate from the notes that are currently in the bar, or how dense the generated rhythm should be. We also allow you to specify a shortlist of beats for the Randomizer to choose from. If you want to generate a rhythm with a triplet feel, you simply specify a source list that contains only triplets.

The Randomizer is anything but random, and with the right settings, you’ll be able to come up with the perfect addition to your beat. Watch this video to learn more about the Randomizer and let us know how do you like to use the Randomizer?