Music Gear Review
Dissecting Toontracks Beatstation
Released in June, Toontrack’s Beatstation marks a new era for the Scandinavian software company in developing virtual instruments for the music production world. Already known for offering an arsenal of top quality drum samples through their world famous applications (EZdrummer and Superior Drummer), the Beatstation is not just a place where you can combine all the rich Toontrack’s expansion packs by its stand alone capabilities. It is also virtual instrument for your recording application that offers huge selection of acoustic and electronic drum samples along side a vast catalogue of bass, synths, guitars sounds, and carefully crafted MIDI and REX grooves. Reflecting upon its complex capabilities, I find that discussing the Beatstation can be similar to the dissection of an animal in science class. From very first incision, you start discovering things you never imagined you would find.
Toontrack envisioned Beatstation to be the one stop solution for all artists and producers who work with loop created music. It’s a place you can find, create and tweak a beat, lay down melodies, and ultimately compose a tune from start to finish. Artfully arranged, the Beatstation interface is designed in a simple and clean way with an almost feng shui quality that is conducive to helping creativity flourish. The main section of the interface contains the drum pads and keyboards. The pads can be rearranged by the drop down menu button located on the top left of the window where you will find a few different options to satisfy your visual needs while working on this product. The bass and lead keyboards are displayed right underneath. Right click on pads or keyboards and you will open the Pad Properties. Here is where the real fun begins. Each properties window offers you plenty of possibilities for crafting each component of your beat. There you can control the amount of effect sent to the sample as well as adding additional ones. You will be able to play around with bit-crushers, choruses, compressors, reverbs, delays and many more. Under the sound profile, you will find one of the unique features on this software which allows you to add up to five different sound samples that can be individually manipulated by a series of sound shaping controls (EQ, change pitch, reverse the sound wave, pan et cetera). This feature helps you to use different sound frequencies from different sound sources so you can create the most unique sounded pad. The possibilities for what you can achieve here were seemingly limitless once I started playing around with this feature.
Right beneath the pads and keyboard windows you will find the main controls for this software. Play and stop buttons that, without music reproduction, would be just impossible. I was glad they made the play/Pause button the biggest one on the interface ensuring there is no way to miss it. Tempo control is located right above “stop” and, like EZdrummer, the Beatstation allows you to make the loop half or double as the normal tempo. For some added fun, two knobs that send effects directly to each sample sound and one that affects the overall beat are given. Once again you will have plenty of options to choose from. Each of the these knobs can be quickly turned off by clicking the little orange “light” next to each of them. The Live Hybrid Sound Library comes with a vast selection of preset instrumets, MIDI and REX grooves, and top quality samples. They are categorized under three built in Beatstation Expansion Packs (BTX): Lowbit, organic, and synthetix. More BTX will be shortly released, expanding the library content even further. The LiveHybrid also gives you the power to use all the EZX and SDX packs that you own, including their MIDI grooves as well. The hundreds of options for sounds and grooves at your disposal become almost overwhelming, and, if this wasn’t enough, Beastation comes with a built in Sample Recorder with simple but powerful features. Simply record, normalize, assign the start and end of the audio wave, and guess what? Just drag and drop your own sample right into one of Beastation pads. It’s that easy! And speaking of the drag and drop, this capability can be found throughout this product’s sections. You can pretty much take and put whatever sample any place you like, including your main production application.
Underneath the Library window you will find the REX window that not only shows the waves of the REX file you’re playing, but also lets you take any wave piece you want to use on your beat. Right underneath you will see the groove window that features the groove variation you are working with and lets you manipulate four properties; velocity, swing, drum flam, and transpose. Another very cool feature of this product can be found under the help button on the top right of the interface. Along side the manual and online support (odd place to have such feature, I think) you will find the Drag MIDI as Audio, which does what is named to do. All the MIDI grooves will show up as audio waves once you drop them into your production application. If you are like me and believe that beauty should not only be interior but exterior as well (ok, a little superficial), the Beatstation comes with a series of layout themes under the “man icon” button where you can also import new BTX, load and save pads layouts, and kit presets. Under “skins” you will have a few very cool options to better make the Beatstation match your personality. You can also color customize every section of the interface. Want to flaunt it? Just go to www.beastation.com and create your own personalized skin and share with the world!
Toontrack’s Beatstation is a piece of software that ensures the creation of original and, most importantly, top quality beats and moods. It’s a product that serves all producers regardless of studio size or project budget. Through and simple and powerful structure, you will be cocooned in endless production ideas. So beware, because this complex beast beat machine will literally launch you into artistic oblivion. I assure you it will be a creative and fun ride.
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