Beaterator (Rockstar Games & Timbaland Presents)

At last a decent music sequencer app for the PSP. Anyone who has played with programs like Music 2000, Ejay or MTV Music Generator will understand how this works.

Beaterator has several aspects to it which allows you to make music using the many built in loops. A loop is a bar of music such as a drum sequence or guitar melody. In the games live mode you simply press a button on the psp to cue up a loop and then use the d pad to move to another track, press another button to choose a different loop until you have built up a cocophany of sound.

In the studio mode you can create your own drum loops and synth loops which you can include in the song crafter. This mode allows you to place loops onto a grid to build up your tune. This is the best part of the app for me. Trying to be creative and placing loops together that sound great is really good fun.

There is quite a lot to this program and will take a little time to find your way around. Included are lots of tutorial videos and in game help.

There are a lot of ready made tunes to listen too across a wide range of genres. Rock, pop, house, breakbeat, hip hop and uk garage. I recieved this game a day before release from Play.com and spent a whole afternoon with my PSP a pair of headphones and Beaterator. It is fun and very addictive.

Recommended to anyone who enjoys music and creativity.

This hasn't come out of my PSP since I bought it a month ago.

Beaterator is very fully-featured for a console music making program, especially a handheld one. It strikes a good balance between keeping it simple enough for novices who just want to drag pre-constructed loops around and get something listenable, whilst offering enough depth that people used to 'proper' music making software/hardware won't find it frustratingly limited.

There are lots of good pre-built loops (both by Timbaland and Rockstar's very capable in-house sound guys) with decent 90s DnB-style time stretching on the loop player. You can build your own drum patterns up in a good Roland x0x-style sample based drum machine too. It also has a basic 3-oscillator semi-modular synth included. There's a piano roll for melodies and 2 fx slots for each of the 8 channels. I've just started importing one hit samples and loops into it from .wavs on a PC and it works really well. Nice Recycle-style automatic beat slicing capabilities too.

I also find the very quick boot up time of a hibernating PSP means that it is ideal to keep by the bed so if you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and need to get something down quickly, it's really useful.

It's obviously never going to replace proper studio gear/a dedicated music laptop, but for quick sessions on the train/at airports/lunchtime it's very good. The fact you can export finished tracks to .wav on the PSP's memory card, so you can get them off onto a PC for burning to CD, MP3ing, uploading, etc. is good as well. Makes it handy for 'sketching' tracks on the move semi-pros, then polishing/mastering them when once back in the studio.

what a great peice of software for the psp !
it is a bit tricky to understand to start with but once you figure the controls (which wont take long) you will open up a huge music sofware program with drum machine, melody maker, record your own samples, 1,000 and 1,000's of pre included ones both from rockstar and timbaland and throw in live play that lets you button bash tunes and make fast funky tunes (and very addictive) for this price it is an absolute steal !!!!
quality software by a quality company and quality producer
rockstar has the touch of gold !!!!

any music blood in your system the just buy it !!! brilliant

for 2 pounds this is well worth the money fun game when your bored.