Steelberry Clones
Beatstation – anything you want it to be
I have had the opportunity to test Toontracks new software the Beatstation (will be launched in June), for some time now and I must say that I am excited about this product. Beatstation is equally an inspirational tool, to find the beat and rythms you want, to a full fledge drum machine and bass line player. Supporting a range of different formats it is very easy to import whatever you have into the Beatstation and play around with it.
When you first open it up it reminds me very much of some of the iPad instruments that has been launched recently, but once you have gotten used to it there is a lot more to explore. Running it via MIDI you can really play around with the pre-loaded drum beats or tweak them as you please, adding your own flavors to the sound.
Speaking of the sound, the drum beats are of excellent condition, especially the snare drums which really kicks it. The easiest way to get started is to load any type of sample or loop, I used some old REX loops that I had in a recent project and added a selection of drum patterns – and this is when the fun starts because you have so many ways of altering the beat and perfect the groove.
The flexibilityto be able to load just about anything and the fact that it works equally well both as a stand alone inspirational sound system and as easy to use VST. I tried it using Reaper as the host and I had no problems hooking it up with Reapers built in Virtual keyboard and start improvising with different sound sets. Another good thing when using Beatstation is that you have the option of configuring the layout of the drums and synths in order to be in sync with what you are accustomed to, the illustartion below shows a bit of an overview on this.
Would i want something more? Well, most of the effects are hidden i drop down menus and for more live situations it might have been better to have a few more controls visible in order to tweak the sound on the fly.
Beatstation seems to fill a gap in today’s plethora of software music instruments, since it focuses on experimentation and your creativity in finding new grooves and rythms.
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