** 1 page review / 726 words ** 

Easy Beat

Shiuming Lai is impressed by Softjee's virtual drum machine for 
the Falcon...

Let's face it, when an exciting new toy arrives, diligently 
reading the instruction manual is probably the last thing on most 
people's minds. Of course, manuals exist for reasons (which to the 
supplier or manufacturer includes protection from liability) but 
desire for practical inquisition is hard to overcome, and learning 
by trial and error often proves more effective than wading through 
pages of documentation like a robot.

Easy Beat, the latest in a barrage of programs from Softjee over 
the past year (on the brink of warranting a magazine all of its 
own, I think), was in my good books within a matter minutes. 
That's how long it took from loading the first time to creating 
the drum loop EASYBEAT.AVR which you can download from the 
ataricomputing web pages, without having to consult the manual. 
The program is all quite clearly laid out and its controls 
sensibly-labelled.

First impressions are pretty obvious: centre-piece of the main 
screen is the attribute control cluster for eight independent 
voices, residing beneath a row of self-explanatory buttons for... 
well, need I say more? Load some sounds, either individually by 
file, or as a batch by path, rather like the QuickCreate list 
compile function in Anodyne's CD Writer. Hit the edit button, 
conveniently bringing up the pattern editor (figure 1). This 
16-beat pattern grid acts as a window to 16 patterns. From here 
it's simply a matter of placing, or cutting and pasting events, it 
all works in real time so you can get a good feel for the rhythm.

In terms of flexibility this is more than your average hardware 
beat box. It can be thought of as a sequencer specifically geared 
towards drum programming, coupled with a modular sample triggering 
sound engine - so really, it's also perfectly possible to load in 
sound banks not containing any drums at all! You see, Easy Beat is 
not an emulation of any particular drum machine, so to get you 
started, it comes with a library including "classic" Roland TR-808 
and TR-909 kits.

Want a bass-line as well? No problem. Load a bass sound into an 
unused slot and start tweaking the pitch-shift (figure 2). Grab a 
copy of Electronic Cow's Sounds and Stuff CD, where you'll find 
lots of bass sounds from the TB-303 and other famous instruments.

Each instrument can be panned, faded, or processed with real time 
DSP effects. My favourite is distortion, it adds a lovely fat 
overdrive to some synthesized bass instruments. Reverb and echo 
need some careful adjustment to avoid cacophonic results.

The sequence can be exported in a number of formats for further 
editing or incorporating into new sequences. There is Easy Beat's 
own song format (which also remembers where the sounds are stored 
so don't go moving them about!), Digital Tracker, MIDI and audio 
(as our EASYBEAT.AVR demonstrates). At the moment the playback and 
audio export is tied to 49.170KHz, I would have expected more 
options from a Softjee product.

Softjee's interface design, however, has improved considerably, as 
have the manuals. French origins are apparent here and there but 
on the whole this is a very good job (French English is usually 
better than English French!). My criticisms are more at the basic 
level, for example, it doesn't remember the directory it was 
started from, so when you go to load some sounds, you have to find 
the path first. Like its stablemates, it also doesn't 
intelligently handle corrupt files, so when it crashes it does so 
spectacularly. Softjee are normally quick to listen and respond to 
constructive criticism so let's hope these minor niggles get 
sorted out soon because overall, Easy Beat is a winner.

** Product boxout **
Publisher: Softjee
softjee@wanadoo.fr
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/softjee/

Price: œ44.95
UK Distributor:
Titan Designs

Pros: Logical interface, immediacy, digital effects, good quality 
sounds supplied
Cons: A few obvious rough edges in terms of fool-proofing
Score: 86%
** /product boxout **

** Images and captions **
** EASYBEAT.GIF **
The main screen.

** DRUMEDIT.GIF **
Figure 1: Rejoice in retro LEDs

** DRUMLIST.GIF **
Sounds can be changed from the drum editor or main screen

** FX2.GIF **

** PITCH.GIF **
Figure 2: It doesn't have to be a drum sound, and it doesn't have 
to be a set pitch. Result, bass-line capability

** File for web download area **
** EASYBEAT.AVR **