Tuesday Tunes: Timbaland Has Got Game: Rockstar Games' Beaterator

• Author: Faith-Ann Young
• Posted on: Tuesday September 15, 2009 at 1:00 PM
• Filed under: exclusive, music, technology, timbaland

These days, it seems every musician and their (hip) mother has created an i-phone application for fans. In fact, half of you readers probably are making prank phone calls using the addictive "I AM T-Pain" Auto-tune application, as you scroll. 

Well, it is time to add producer extraordinaire and Justin's collaborator and good friend, Timbaland, to the bunch of tech-experimenting musicians. The difference is Timbaland didn't just slap together an application. Instead, he teamed up with gaming pros,  Rockstar Games, creators of Grand Theft Auto and other notable video games, to perfect the device (Rockstar Games actually began creation of the device in 2005 as a flash application on their website). Then, he spent the past 4 years collecting beats and personalizing the program.

Thus, the application, created for Playstation Portable, iPhone and iPod Touch, is a robust tool that allows each player to layer beats and drums into a song through various screen navigations, while a computerized "DJ" seamlessly mixes it all together (See the Tim look-a-like above.)

This weekend at The Rivington Hotel in NYC, Timbaland explained why it took the four years collaborating with Rockstar Games to  birth the Beaterator. "The game world and the music/record world are completely different. I don't know the game world so it [wasn't] as easy as making an album. There are steps," said Tim. "[I] wanted to make sure it has a little more edge than all of the other games."

Timbaland (Photo: Rockstar Games)

Timbaland, not a stranger to promotion, spoke to the caliber of the game, stating: " Once I get really good at the game, I think I [could] just bring it to the studio all the time and use it like I use my peices of equipment....Beaterator could make a really good hip hop album...I'd do it on my phone and record it and then blow it up on Protools, etc." As for newbies to the program: "If you are an amateur, I think you might think you're great. The sounds are really great, not corney. It has that hump."

The Rivington Hotel (Photo: Faith-Ann Young)

For more about Timbaland's collaboration with Rockstar Games, and input in the process:

As Beaterator is fun enough of a novice yet complex enough for....Timbaland, Beaterator raises the bar for the stream of digital mixers and gaming applications on the market now, while strategically following the gaming frenzy spurred by the ubiquitous Guitar Hero. It also is good promotion for DIY music creation.

However, if you think using Timbaland's Beaterator will make you the next big producer, think again:

"I don't care if there is a snare or a kick that sounds like me... nobody can make a beat that sounds like me, cause they don't think like me," said Timbaland. Then again, perhaps this is a call to action for all aspiring DJs and producers to go ahead and give it a try...

 

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