Nerd Up

I bought this app back in September when I first found out about it. Reviewing the features really turned me on… I’d been looking for a mobile music application for a while – I’d previously tried out the homebrew app Nitrotracker for the Nintendo DS back in the spring, but found the environment to be ‘user hostile’ (i.e. the interface was not conducive to creativity).

Beatmaker is a different story. The graphics will make most people who are familiar with drum machines and step sequencers feel comfortable, and navigation is fairly easy. Communication with your computer is achieved via Beatpack (OSX/Windows). With this running on your machine, data can be transferred to and from the application via Wifi. It also allows you to create your own drum kits from the samples you drag and drop into place. It worked very well on my old MacBook (only tested under OSX). I made my kit from a free Goldbaby sample pack (http://goldbabysamples.blogspot.com/) and it was completed in seconds. Downloading to my iPod touch was a simple matter of entering the correct IP address from Beatpack into Beatmaker, and the software actually holds your hand through this.

The sequencer is straightforward and super easy to use. I found my way around without using the manual, and made some loops with included sounds and successfully exported them to MIDI (which I later imported into Cubase 4). The effects are fun and easy to understand, and they don’t sound bad.

BUT

Groove is weird in Beatmaker. I say this because the way it handles the “swing/shuffle” groove factor of drums is an interface I’ve never encountered before. Basically, you must move your notes around in time to where you want your groove to be on a graph which is like the “pitchbend” view for MIDI data that you get in most grown-up sequencers. If you want your note to be earlier or later the value is negative or positive respectively – Hookay…. I think I’ll wait till I get the pattern into my computer…

Beatmaker cannot do anything other than drums without having specific samples set for the notes you want. If you have an idea for a melody or a bassline (etc) you won’t be able to actually write music. All this software does is allow you to arrange (very small amounts of) samples into patterns. It is possible to use the pitch function to create “melodies” but there is no way to change the duration of the sample so it’ll sound weird, and there won’t be real note values when you export. If you want to use loops,  you will have to calculate your loop length by the BPM in an external sample editor and change the duration and pitch manually. With all the kick-ass (and inexpensive) software on the market I don’t see a reason to return to Beatmaker after you have your exported media.

One last thing… until I understood the file structure I had some trouble saving and recovering my beats. RTFM. You must make the folder AND file before you save. Saving doesn’t create a project file!!! Operator error, perhaps.

: S

Conclusions

While this software won’t replace fully-fledged samplers and sequencers in the near future, this is still an impressive tool for sketching out drum ideas when you’re out and about. It’s designed as an Akai MPC kind of sampler emulation, to which end I think it succeeds… All Intua has to do is implement swing in a way that makes sense and it’ll really be there (yes, I know it works but it could be waaaay better). If you have an idea and you want to start fleshing it out (in 4/4 time only) you can pull out your iPhone (or iPod touch) and go. At $20 it’s more expensive than most iPhone apps, but I personally spend more than that on beer and coffee in a week. What’s more important to ya, beverages or creativity in your pocket? Fun stuff.

Next, noise.io !

BeatMaker by Intua Software

Available in iPhone app store.

BeatPack is available for OSX and Windows XP/Vista

Find out more at http://www.intua.net/