Review: Beaterator

What is it?
Music-making software for the PSP, fronted by beats-meister Timbaland.

What we like
It's easy to start making music straight away, with plenty of additional options for the more musically minded.

What we don't like
Non-musicians can easily feel confused once they stray beyond the application's introductory stage.

Judgment
Beaterator is an astounding achievement - a piece of software that, in effect, turns your PSP into a portable music studio. But it's not for the faint-hearted, and getting the most from it will take dedication.

Review
One of the side-effects of a youth misspent playing video games is that it's been rather to the detriment of other skills. We thought we were the clever ones as we laughed at the square kids waddling off to music practice while we we honed our Street Fighter II special moves. Now it turns out they now have an enviable life skill. Sure, we can still pull off a mean dragon punch, but sometimes that just doesn't seem quite as cool as strumming through the intro to Stairway to Heaven.

Happily, technology has come, once again, to the rescue. It turns out we no longer need an an ounce of talent in order to express the musical genius we all know is inside us. We just need a PSP and a copy of Beaterator.

This latest title from from the Rockstar stable is a piece of music creation software for Sony's handheld that's been designed to be instantly accessible, even for those who think perfect pitch is the grass at Wembley.

Aimed at gamers more used to tapping along with other people's songs on Rock Band or Guitar Hero, it instead gives you the chance to make your own beautiful music (or your own filthy drum'n'bass epic - should you prefer) from a vast selection of pre-recorded music loops.

Leading you through the process is music producer Timbaland, who has not only provided over 1,000 original loops for the title, but also appears throughout (in cartoon form) to offer coaching on using the game's various features.

Anyone who has seen other music-making software in action will know these programs tend to veer towards the baffling. By contrast, Beaterator's watchword is accessibility, something that's exemplified by the title's simple introductory stage: Live Play.

The Live Play area is split across two screens; on each the four face buttons activate a single loop of music. Pressing a button starts a loop, and it will continue to play until you press that button again. This gives you eight channels of sound to play with, and you can choose different loops to be associated with each button.

In the background, Beaterator does all the hard work for you by synchronising the beats whenever you add a new loop, so your tune is always perfectly in time. As you do so, Timbaland presides in the middle of the screen, nodding his head appreciatively to every beat and bleep.

Musically, the focus is on hip-hop and electronic music, though you can download your own .wav files into the app if you're hankering after more variety. Should you be blessed with the voice of an angel, you can also use an external mic to record your own vocal samples.

Live Play is by far the most accessible part of Beaterator; in under a minute you can create a decent-sounding tune. However, it's a quick fix that won't ultimately hold your attention for very long. To get deeper into whatever music you're making, you need to move into the Studio section. Here you'll use an entirely different interface (which looks a lot more like what the pros would use) and have access to a stack more tools. Studio opens up a lot more room for individual creativity, in particular because it enables you to create your own loops.

Whenever you choose a new feature in this section (and in the even deeper Song Crafter area), you'll be offered the option to watch a brief tutorial. It's a neat way to learn the program in stages, but patience is nonetheless required. Still, if you're prepared to put in the time to get to know all these features, you'll be able to come up with some genuinely impressive results.

All the same, once you're out of Live Play the game is no longer a pick-up-and-play experience. It requires levels of concentration (and a fair bit of time) that more casual musos may be unwilling to put in. At this point, Beaterator also runs up against issues with its platform of choice, the PSP. There's no getting away from the fact that moving and editing loops is easier with a mouse on a home computer than it is using the PSP's buttons and analogue stick.

Beaterator is a fine achievement that will have a niche market. The Live Play area of the game is simple to use, but has little depth for continued play time. Beyond that, the more in-depth Studio and Song Crafter sections are impressively featured, given the restrictions of the hardware. However, despite the commendable efforts at making these areas accessible, they are still likely to prove impenetrable to those who spent too long on their Mega Drive and not enough time at music class.

Beaterator is out now for PSP.