Beaterator for the iPhone might not be as full-featured as the PlayStation Portable version, but then at $4.99 compared to $39.99, we wouldn't expect it to be. Remix premade tunes or create your own in loop mode using a simple touch screen interface that might actually have a leg-up on its PSP predecessor. It won't make you the next Mozart, of course, but it certainly has the potential to make visits to the bathroom much more musical than they already are.

That didn't sound right.

Beaterator for the iPhone is available now on the Apple iTunes App Store.

"It a fully featured studio that runs on a pocket-sized device," says an instructor at the school. "They're able to learn music theory in a different format. It's the same information; just a different way of presenting it".

According to a piece on CBS - which spends a great deal of time dealing with how many budget cuts the school is facing - East Side students are just thrilled, one saying "This is music. You're making your own music and it's really fun", with another, Isiah Martinez, adding "I learned that you can make beats on the PSP".

Education as advertising? It's worked before, and by golly Rockstar, it's working again.

Instruments In 1 NYC Music Program Replaced By PSP [CBS]

Rockstar's Beaterator isn't some corny-ass game. It's a four-year labor of love for Timbaland, pouring his heart, soul, and exclusive beats into the music creator. Speaking with Invasion Radio, the artist reveals that his upcoming album will feature beats from the game on a couple of tracks. "Oh yeah, I made a couple from that...I had to," he explains, after bragging a bit about the capabilities of the title. He also used the game in the production of Jay-Z's recent ‘Blueprint 3′ album.

I went and purchased Beaterator, but so far haven't had much luck in producing anything outside of the most basic sounds imaginable. Perhaps I just don't have it in me, or perhaps my bathroom simply isn't conducive to creating works of musical genius.

Timbaland Using ‘Beaterator' For New Album Shock Value 2 [The Koalition]

Now, of course I've heard people say that this is wrong; that video games cheapen or damage the experience of learning real music with their plastic peripherals and oversimplification of beats, rhythm and notes. But it seems like even more music games seem to be popping up in response to this criticism – all of which claiming that they are different, that they really are about the music and not about mimicking and button mashing.

Think about it: we've got Timbaland's Beaterator which includes lessons on real music theory in the tutorial, DJ Hero which introduces the concept of an artist who uses other people's music to make an original song and elaborate music studio components in Rock Band and Guitar Hero that put the power of composition directly in your button-mashing fingers. And let us not forget Wii Music and all its lofty educational ambitions.

To tone deaf choir reject like myself, the music game scene isn't just over saturated – it's downright intimidating. Am I supposed to be entertained, educated or indoctrinated? I can hardly decide.

All of this came up today while talking with Carlo Delallana (designer) and Matt Leunig (associate producer) about their game, Jam Sessions 2 – a guitar simulator. I was playing Good Reporter and trying to find out how the game would treat me as a gamer and also as a would-be musician (despite my evident failure in middle school).

I asked about the scoring system and Delallana said the game wouldn't punish me or make the song sound bad for messing up a note. I started to ask about competitive multiplayer and both Leunig and Delallana emphasized that their game was more about making music than trying to be better than the next guy. Finally, I told them about Beaterator's music theory lessons and asked for their take, and Delallana dropped this bomb: "There's a danger in teaching [music] because there's no one way to learn music."

That may be why Jam Sessions 2 is so careful not to punish gamers for messing things up – and why it doesn't really tell you what to do when you get to the music studio to start recording and editing your own tracks. It also may be why I gravitate to it over Beaterator or Rock Band because I don't really know that I want a music game to teach me or judge me on something I feel like I suck at. But is that reaction even worse than me assuming I know how to play the guitar having beaten Killer Queen on Hard?

It comes down to what music games are supposed to be for. If Delallana is right and there's no one way to learn music, then maybe it doesn't matter whether or not DJ Hero has a better track list than Scratch: The Ultimate DJ. But on the other hand, if the game isn't supposed to teach me music – if it's really just an interactive fantasy where I can pretend to be a rock star – maybe all music games are only as good as their set lists.

Either way you look at it, though, there is eventually going to be a music game for everybody if the market for these games keeps expanding like it is. Whether you're a choir reject like me or a Ukulele Hero hold-out, there just might be some comfort in that.

Hopeful MySpace Music artists who want to take a stab at making music with Beaterator can visit http://beaterator.ign.com/ to apply for a chance at being one of up to 100 artists that Rockstar chooses to participate in the Beaterator and MySpace Music Challenge. Those who make the cut will be sent a PSP and a copy of the game. From there they have 14 days to create something beautiful and poignant, after which their creations will be tossed up on MySpace and IGN communities to be weighed and measured for 25% of their final score.

The winner will receive the $5,000 grand prize and have their track featured on the PlayStation Network, where millions of PlayStation 3 owners visit every day. Not generally for music, but they do visit.

Artists have until October 11th to sign up for a chance, so if you happen to be a MySpace artist, get going. The rest of you can sit and ponder how fortunate it is that I didn't abbreviate this article's headline.

Is it possible to over-stress the importance of Rockstar's upcoming music creator for the PSP? I think this video proves that yes, it definitely is. It's still a pretty amazing little PSP application, but perhaps Ice-T's had a bit too much drama in his acting career.

Rockstar's game that's more like a music application, Beaterator, features a ton of modes for the making of music on your PSP – all of which Stephen Totilo breaks down for you here. The project was very much the brainchild of Grammy Award-winning rapper/composer Timbaland and it was his goal to give a younger generation the chance to understand music at a fundamental level.

"We want to educate people," the Rockstar rep yelled over the super-loud club music blasting during Sony Computer Entertainment's PSP media event. "That's why Timbaland is involved."

Beaterator, you see, is about more than just pressing buttons until you find a sequence that sounds good. And it's not just a construction-paper type mode where you can cut and paste pre-rendered music together any which way you want. Using the intricate tools in the Song and Melody Crafter modes, along with some really well-written Tips and video tutorials, a gamer could learn the fundamentals of music theory. If they could hear the sound, that is.

Even without the sound, though, I was able to understand the construction of songs just by looking at the breakdown of beats within an original Timbaland drum loop. Two beats on a crisp snare at 1.3 into the song was so easy to comprehend from the interface that I just knew it would wreck the backbeat to subtract the first one – but not the second. Even though I couldn't hear the sound of the game over the blaring of the club music, my eyes grasped why my ears missed out on.

Beyond that, I found that in Melody mode, you can lock the key at which all the music plays so that you'll never wind up pasting in anything that doesn't sound good. This is a godsend for tone-deaf people like myself who couldn't tell C sharp from A minor even if you held a gun to my head. So while Beaterator might not be something I'd want to buy for myself (I like games, not making music). But I think music teachers across the country would kill to get this program into their students' hands.

Look for it September 29.

I've played other music creation titles in the past with varying levels of success. The main obstacle is always accessibility. It looks like Rockstar has made Beaterator so accessible that a group of photogenic school children can lay down a track in minutes flat.

For those of you allergic to children, check out the regular old trailer below.

Last week, the studio behind the renowned Grand Theft Auto series and more eclectic fare such as Bully and their very own table tennis game, let me visit to witness a session of Beaterator. The application — they don't call it a "game" — is a September-slated portable digital music studio that traces back to Rockstar's 2005 Internet application of the same name.

The hook is that Beaterator is digital music creation made easier. The fantasy is to be Timbaland. The superstar producer doesn't just lend his name and cartoon likeness to the game. He presides over the catchiest tutorial video I've witnessed in a … an application. It seems, at first, that Timbaland is simply talking to you, telling you how Beaterator works, but with a sample here, an echo of his voice there, a building beat beneath it all, you realize he's made music out of talking. And suddenly it seems like we all have a shot at this making-music thing.

The Timbaland tutorial presents the program's sections: Live Play, Studio and Song Crafter.

Live Play is the most graspable mode, the most visually appealing and the one most suited for those of us who have never dug deeper in making music than messing around with Nintendo's Electroplankton or the drum fills in Harmonix's Rock Band. Timbaland stands in the center of the PSP screen. The four corners display four possible sound and beat samples out of the programs' several thousand available. In total eight tracks are in play in this mode. Selecting what to play on any of them involves picking from four randomly offered samples presented by Beaterator. Selecting a corner and pressing one of the PSP's four face buttons kicks in a beat or some sort of loop. The user can layer on up to eight, switching tracks in and out, narrowing their offerings by choosing from a musical style like, say, hip-hop. Beaterator smooths the timing of the loops, linking the user-selected samples and sounds into an on-beat, on-rhythm mix. The idea is that you'll tap around and come up with something catchy and unique.

Studio lets you manipulate the song you'd made. Each of the eight tracks can be isolated and have its levels raised or lowered. The song can be sped up or slowed down. While there's greater manual control of a song in this mode, it struck me that Studio is the wading area that is meant to prep users who aren't ready to move into the deep end of the Song Crafter.

This third mode, Song Crafter is essentially a PSP-ified ProTools or other computer audio mixing program. A song's tracks are represented as color-coded portions of horizontal lines. Those chunks can be chopped up, copied, deleted or moved. New samples can be brought in, including audio captured via the PSPgo or PSP 3000's mic or through a .wav file. So, yes, you can sing or rap to your creations. The option in Song Crafter appeared to be deep, offering an 88-key synthesizer keyboard for composition, an interface for creating and manipulating drum patterns, an interface for adjusting things like "Decay" and "Detune."

The Rockstar rep who showed me Beaterator and managed to make a catchy enough song during our brief demo said that some of Beaterator's deepest options are too esoteric even for him to use. But he presents the complete package as an effort by Rockstar to lessen the intimidation factor for creating music.

Rockstar plans to support Beaterator with downloadable content and is working out plans to enable exporting and uploading of songs. A simplified version of the application was also recently announced for the iPhone and iPod Touch. According to Rockstar press materials, that version won't have the advanced song-editing options of the PSP release.

It's hard to judge how successful Beaterator will be in the hands of PSP users. I'm used to judging Rockstar creations by their gameplay and fun. What I saw looked thorough and smart, but it'll be for PSP owners to decide whether they have an appetite for making music or a hidden desire that everything from Guitar Hero to Wii Music failed to satisfy.

To make music, with the help of a video game platform, this is your next shot.

The PSP edition of Beaterator launches on September 29 for $39.99.

While we were expecting Beaterator thanks to model Jacquetta Wheeler, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the iPhone comes as a complete surprise. Rockstar's Sam Houser explains why these two titles are perfect for the iPhone.

"The simple, pick-up-and-play nature of Beaterator lends itself so well to the Apple platforms. We are happy to deliver an application that allows for such unprecedented sharing and ease-of-use."

And what about Chinatown Wars? "Chinatown Wars is a perfect match for the iPhone and iPod touch. We are very excited to bring this incredibly ambitious version of Liberty City, with this level of detail and immersive gameplay on Apple's new gaming platforms."

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was only recently confirmed for the Sony PSP. The iPhone version should combine that version's enhanced graphics with the Nintendo DS version's touch screen controls. The two great tastes that taste great together? We'll find out this fall.

Now, we already know that Beaterator, produced with Timbaland, is on the way to the PSP next month. Nobody said anything about iPhone, though. And don't ask me why I'm reading a friggin' Vogue fashion model blog, OK? But Wheeler seems awful certain that's the game and that's the platform on which she saw it. Verbatim, here's what she wrote back on Aug. 12:

I stayed the last two nights with my dear friend Anouchka, her hubby Sam and their two adorable kids. It was heaven waking up every morning to their gorgeous little faces in my bedroom saying good morning Auntie Jac. Sam, who works at Rockstar Games, introduced me to Beaterator, a game that's about to come out, produced by Rockstar Games together with Timbaland. It is genius. I don't have an i-phone yet but think I'm going to have to buy one now as this game is so much fun and you can play it on your i-phone wherever you are. You are basically a DJ and the game enables you to create your own mixes. Hook it up to some speakers and you've got a party going on. You don't have to know anything about mixing, no prior experience required, and yet you are left wondering whether you should pack up your current career and move to Ibiza to become the next Sven Vath. Its a LOT of fun. Have a look: www.rockstargames.com.

If so, Beaterator would be Rockstar's first ever game for the iPhone.

And whatever the case, Sam Houser might want to think about making his houseguests sign NDAs from now on.

Jacquetta Wheeler's Blog [Vogue UK]

I recently got an advance demo of Beaterator in action and will have coverage of the PSP title next week. Can't say any more or Rockstar PR will be on the hunt. Can't allow that. They're only a few blocks away.

Rockstar sent the word out this morning that the music creator, which has long been kept under wraps since first debuting as an online time-waster, will be out on September 29 in the US, while it'll be out in Europe on October 2.

Pop producer Timbaland is still onboard with the project, and is full-blown celebrity endorsement mode, saying "I've worked closely with Rockstar Games to make something completely unique. Beaterator is like taking my music studio and turning it into a suite of tools anyone can use. We can't wait to hear the beats people make and share with the world."

Highlights from Take Two's second quarter earnings call follow, minus the big BioShock and GTA stuff, since we covered that already...

*Take-Two lost $10.1 million in the quarter ending April 30, 2009, with revenue dropping more than half compared to the same period last year, down to $229.7 million, largely due to Grand Theft Auto IV boosting numbers last Q2 of 2008 and this corresponding quarter's big games, like Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, not doing the same. More numbers in the company's official Q2 earnings release.

*Take Two confirmed the fall release of Rockstar's long-in-development Beaterator (covered here in early 2007), describing it as a "powerful and intuitive music mixer," that will support downloadable music. The software had originally been pitched to media as a PSP title that was being created in conjunction with Timbaland. Neither Sony's handheld platform nor the renowned producer were mentioned in today's announcements, with the Beaterator's platform listed as "TBA."

*Take Two won't say how well Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned sold, with an executive noting that "we're not disclosing those numbers and it is not our typical practice that we would."

*The company denied the demise of brick-and-mortar retail for the gaming industry, which some gaming pundits have been predicting. Said a Take Two senior exec: "Retail is the primary channel for the foreseeable future."

*Asked about the recently announced deal that allows the top team at Rockstar to create games that they own, a Take Two executive declined to provide much of a progress report beyond noting that: "All of us will be blown away and consumers will be delighted by these upcoming releases."

That's it for this quarter. I promise in three months' time to learn the difference between chairman Strauss Zelnick's voice, CEO Ben Feder's and any others so I can specify which top guy said which on the call.

Take-Two also confirmed that the PSP rhythm game Beaterator has also slipped off the release radar, moving to at least 2009.