Musical instrument manufacturers Yamaha have started to expand their electric drum-kit range as far as desktop kits.
With respect for electric kits from its peers in the bag, thanks to the hugely popular DTXtreme IIs kit, Yamaha has begun to deliver smaller, more portable friendly drum/pad machines. The Yamaha DTX Multi 12 looks more like electronic synth pads and houses 12 velocity-sensitive drum pads and a sound module in a compact, low-profile unit.
The on board sound module collect sounds from a local Yamaha Motif Synthesiser and comes as standard with 1200 individual voices. The module also caters for users to upload their own sounds and loops to the 64MB memory and assign selected pre-made patterns to specific pads, making the unit useful for triggering samples and patterns, as well as connecting it to laptops via USB for easy management of its 200 different drum kit setups for live play.
Available this December (with no exact release date yet) makes it an ideal Christmas gift, at £685.
UK games developers Rockstar ( famous for Grand Theft Auto series)have produced a platform/sequencer for producing tunes on the PSP. The “Beaterator” has been endorsed by US hip-hop producer Timbaland (watch his review here) who has contributed to providing a library of around 1600 samples. The Sequencer tool also has capabilities to accept any new samples you want to import yourself via memory stick.
The audio engine bounces along at 16 word-length, 22kHz sample rate and includes a mixer with eight stereo tracks, these can be looped wit a built in synth or/and a sequencer pattern. because each pattern can include up to eight sample channels you can create up to a maximum 64 samples in each tune. Extra techy info includes each mixer accommodating up to two insert effects including compression, EQ and Multi-mode Filters along with others soon to be announced. The Beaterator comes with a virtual-analogue synth (mono) with three oscillators. Each oscillator allows you to move and bend the noises with its sinewave anything up to as much as 10 percent. You can see the live demo here. The sequencer also has built in multi-mode filters and two assignable LFO’s (low frequency oscillators). On top of the standard song arrangement (which you’ll probably use most of the time) there is a session mode for playback of your loops or you can just wing it live an make it up as you go along! Glow sticks and whistles at the ready! Buying some external speakers are a must surely!
The Beaterator is due to come out in the US at the end of September (29th) at around $40, an in the UK a month later on October for £30. The developers have announced they intend to release a version of the Beaterator for the AppleiPhone, which has around twice the processing power of the PSP, for the autumn. With some expansion on the synth concept with the touch screen hopefully.
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