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I really liked your review. I'm not into this kind of application, but I was/am curious about it and it's functionality. What'd be really cool is if you could upload one of your 'songs' to some filesharing service and link it here. I'd enjoy hearing one of your productions! Thanks for the review.
I have been waiting for years for an application that truly allows your musical creativity to run wild. Traxxpad for the PSP is what I wanted MTV Music Generator (PS2) to be. For anyone who is not familiar with this title, Traxxpad is NOT a rhythm game. Eidos touts Traxxpad as a "portable studio" for the PSP and that is exactly what it is.
When I first heard about this application I was anxiously skeptical, as I really wanted it to live up to its description but thought it was a bit overly ambitious. Nevertheless, two EB Games and three Gamestops later I was finally able to pick up a copy and have been pouring over it ever since.
For any, such as myself, who are unfamiliar with digital studios there is a significant learning curve to overcome in order to get started.You will not be able to pick it up and just start cranking out the hits without first spending a fair amount of quality time with the instruction manual. However, once you do get going you soon realize its well worth it.
First, let's go ahead and address the graphics of this application. Since this is not a game, and it is an application driven by audio the visuals are inconsequential. Nonetheless, upon booting up the app you are asked to choose a skin to personalize it, if only slightly. Each skin has its own animation during and between modules. None of it is jawdropping, but it is more than I personally expected. All of the necessary screens, windows, icons, and menus are perfectly decipherable, and that's all that matters.
Traxxpad is divided into four modules: R.T.I.S.T., MeLOD, S.T.A.C., and MyXXer. The first three are essential to creating your own tunes. Starting in R.T.I.S.T. you create a musical sequence. Edit that sequence to your liking in MeLOD, and assemble multiple sequences to create songs in the S.T.A.C. module. The MyXXer module is good in principle, but seems really tacked on due to its limitations. While creating a sequence in R.T.I.S.T. or MeLOD you have at your disposal eight different sound files. Each group of eight sounds makes up a bank. In an effort to get the user started more quickly they have provided a number of kits that you can choose from. Kits are banks of preselected sounds that you can use right away instead of going through and picking out the sounds you want. Again, in principle this was a good idea.
This application boasts over 1,000 sounds available to play with. In addition, Traxxpad gives you the ability to create new sounds by either combining two sounds or even recording your own sound using a PSP headset. If you still haven't found that perfect sound you can actually edit any sound using the Chop Shop feature. You can fade a sound in or out, reverse it and more.
Traxxpad is not a perfect application by any means. I found a few controls to be a bit counterintuitive. For instance, to pause/play you use the 'SELECT' button instead of the more popular 'START' button, meanwhile 'START' is used to display the menus (that you, um, 'select' from). For me that took (ahem, is taking) a long time to get used to. Selecting sounds for editing a bank is also a problem. The process is time consuming, tedious, and cumbersome. Instead of being able to go to the sound files,search, sample, and assign them to your bank at one time you must slog through up to six menus to edit one.... sound....at....a....time. This is beyond annoying. There are other examples, but that is to me the most frustrating. My final gripe is that some of the sound files do not sound as polished as others. There have been a few instances where I wanted to use a certain sound - a saxophone for example - and had to select a different sound simply because the sax just did not sound good.
Traxxpad set out to do what no other console application has ever done, and it succeeded. The PSP seems to be the perfect fit for this portable studio. Although it is not flawless, it is very good at what it does, especially once you become well versant with it. I have already created amazing songs that one would not think possible from a PSP application. My friends are actually blown away by the quality of the productions. Traxxpad is being marketed to persons interested in producing Hiphop and Pop music, but I would recommend it also to individuals interested in producing music for video games. If you already own a digital studio for your PC or Mac then this might not be what you are looking for. Traxxpad will not replace your Fruity Loops. But if you do not already own a digital studio or if you just want to be able to record music whenever and wherever you want then this is for you. And just for you rating nuts: I give Traxxpad an 9 out of 10.
Here are two of the tracks I've created using Traxxpad. Thanks to YoYoPete for making this possible!
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. I really enjoyed Shogun. I'm impressed. How long did it take you to write/produce these? If you've done this well with this program in this short a time, I really want to hear what you're doing with it in 6 months. Is it good enough you'll still be using it?