so the Beat thang is actually at my local bestbuy

[So Solid Poo]

AWWWWW SHIT MY BITCH/UR MOMZ GONNA TURN HELLA TRICKS 4 DIS SHIT.

HOLLA!!!

[Cool Character]

^^^ Passive aggressive racist middle American white guy who feels threatened by anything remotely black.

No offense.

[drewbixcube]

I'm not bashing turntables, and I apologize if it came off that way. I have 1200's myself. Love them. I just personally don't consider them to be a musical instrument. I see them as a tool to play other peoples music on, and given the right skillset, manipulate that music......musically. <-- if that makes sense.

And your right, I've never dug deep into hip-hop so I'm unaware of any advanced midi techniques. My point is that a turntable isn't the same type of musical instrument as say a sax or synth or berlin grande. At least in my opinion. Again, not bashing turntableism, I've seen great things done with two decks and a mixer and love playing with them myself.

*sigh* I don't think we can win this one fellas.

matthews... You have admitted a turntable is a tool that manipulates music musically. Since tool is synonymous with instrument, you have admitted that the turntable is an instrument that manipulates music musically. Why can't you just admit that it's a musical instrument? Why all the roundabout cryptic language? Yes, a sax isn't a synth, and a synth isn't a berlin grande, but they are all instruments that manipulate music musically. Just because you don't know how to play an instrument, doesn't make it any less of an instrument.

[convex]

.

[matthews]

Like I've said, I have tech 1200's, so I know how to play them.

And now that I'm reading my points over, I see where it gets confusing.

I guess it comes down to, using a conventional instrument and creating something unique yourself, versus using turntables and sampling other peoples works. Because even though your still creating, your more of a manipulator than an inventor?

But even then I guess it's a gray area because maybe the turntableist is in fact using their own samples. Or if they're using other peoples samples, they can put it together in a way that becomes theirs. Everyhing's a remix isnt it?

If a DJ plays one song and then directly mixes into another, is he a musician playing a musical instrument? Or is he just playing music? At what point does that change? I can technically manipulate music with my cars CD player, is it therefore an instrument too?

Now that I'm looking at all this, I actually may need to rethink my position. Perhaps I'm ignorant.

I just genuinely always saw a disconnect between turntables and conventional instruments. Maybe that is in fact wrong. Same with musicians and people who solely sample. Damn. I've never considered myself an ignorant person.

[agent314]

The featureset of this thing is okay for 200 or 300 bucks. MAYBE 500 with some perks.

Spending 1500 bucks for this is a straight up waste of money and if you've got that kind of cashwad to blow, give it to me and I'll put you together a way better portable workstation for half of it and keep the rest for myself.

[stringtapper]

^^^ Passive aggressive racist middle American white guy who feels threatened by anything remotely black.

No offense.

That person actually talks that way about everything.

And his post count doesn't seem to be going above 100 the more he posts.

[convex]

.

[drewbixcube]

Like I've said, I have tech 1200's, so I know how to play them.

And now that I'm reading my points over, I see where it gets confusing.

I guess it comes down to, using a conventional instrument and creating something unique yourself, versus using turntables and sampling other peoples works. Because even though your still creating, your more of a manipulator than an inventor?

But even then I guess it's a gray area because maybe the turntableist is in fact using their own samples. Or if they're using other peoples samples, they can put it together in a way that becomes theirs. Everyhing's a remix isnt it?

If a DJ plays one song and then directly mixes into another, is he a musician playing a musical instrument? Or is he just playing music? At what point does that change? I can technically manipulate music with my cars CD player, is it therefore an instrument too?

Now that I'm looking at all this, I actually may need to rethink my position. Perhaps I'm ignorant.

I just genuinely always saw a disconnect between turntables and conventional instruments. Maybe that is in fact wrong. Same with musicians and people who solely sample. Damn. I've never considered myself an ignorant person.

Therein lies the rub. I can bang the keys on a piano, but that doesn't make me a musician. Nevertheless, the piano is still an instrument. DJs that mix are not playing the turntables, they are playing the records. Turntablists that manipulate the pitch slider to create a musical rift completely separate from the original recording ARE playing the turntable. It is still an instrument. It's just that one knows how to play it, and the other doesn't. It's not terribly difficult to distinguish one from the other.

You're not being ignorant. Perception has everything to do with how we view the world around us. You perceive the turntable differently, and that's okay. But it's good to see things from a different perspective now and then.

[kitekrazy]

It's a toy. Noting wrong with that. You can put some things together quickly and easily. But its not like you'd ever compose and record an entire track with this. And if you did, imagine how limited you'd be. Maybe you can get away with this in hip-hop?

If they put it at around $200-$300 and branded and marketed the shit outta it, they'd probably sell a few. Even at that price I personally wouldn't touch it.

They did market this quite a bit well over a year ago. Interesting that the pricing for the hardware unit was around $800 and not $1500. If they could find a way like the gaming industry to try to profit of software and take the loss on the hardware, they would probably make a killing selling these for under $300 since it would appeal to the non DAW crowd.

[starving student]

I knew where this whole thing was going in the beginning, but all hiphop bashing aside,
back on topic, first of all I don't work for beatthang, if you spent any time on this forum
you'd already know that no big deal the point is I'm serious when it comes to samplers. I don't
even make the kind of music that the cats behind beatthang make, but I don't want to even open up
that can-o-worms. suffice to say I know what I'm talking about. which I only point out because
you seem to think I don't when it's clearly obvious that you're ill informed about the artform and if that comes off snotty that's not what I mean to be. I love all kinds of music and I have no doubt that you're good at whatever you're into but when it comes to samplers you're calling a piece of hardware a toy when it is clearly not and comparing it to software when that's not a fair comparison, on top of that what happened to you in 1997 that's got you so riled up geewhiz so let me tell you what I found out about this thing.

I just spent an hour with this thing and it's definitely not worth 1499 to me because I wouldn't spend that much on a hardware sampler at this point, but I have spent quite allot on samplers I have owned or do own

kurzweil k2000vp, eps16, eps16+, asr10, asrx,
asrxturbo, mpc 2000, mpc-2500, mpc-500,
yamaha rs-7000, roland sp808, roland sp-808emix,
roland sp-303, korg triton, roland w-30
and all sampling software for both mac and pc, even radial back in the day.

[starving student]

for some reason can't post as much as I want in one go, oh well

anyway it's built extremely well, and really is very intuitive
they wouldn't let me use the manual but I got enough wthout it cause most of the functions have a dedicated button and the menu diving is not too bad. again it's built very well, it's smaller than
an mpc-1000 but solid, the knobs function in two ways they dial, and also double as buttons. the screen is excellent, colorful and full of useful stuff like graphics on garage band, so if you load up a kit of sounds which can span the whole 88 key range there are pictures on the screen that corespond to what type of sound it is on that paticular pad...whoopdy doo.....
omg this suprised me the most, I thought the pads were shit from the videos but they are super repsonsive I'm not sure if I like them better than maschines pads or not but it's so frickin close it's rediculous, if I prefer maschines it's because of the size, maschines are bigger and I'm partial to the square shape but the feel of the beat thangs pads are excellent, without a doubt better than the mpcs pads by far.

[convex]

.

[starving student]

continued--

you don't know what it's like sequencing on a drumsampler with a pitch stick on the left and a mod stick on the right until you use one, this shit was fun as fuck, especially to record all the manipulation into the sequencer, btw the sequencer is easy as fuck to use but I prefer the mpc sequencer to the whole 16 track sequencer thing that the beatthangs got going on, I don't know the exact resolution but whatever, I turned quantize off and was able to get some very expressive things going, didn't feel any hindrance, even though it has only 16 tracks you've got a ton of layers (16) per pad and the whole 88 keyrange to fuck with , for those of you being super creative with such limitations you will do all kinds of shit with this.
I'm going to buy one tomorrow and keep it for a few days after which I will tell you what's good in more detail and clarity. my first impression is that it's quite impressive, it distinctively gives you that feel of who the hell designed this thing, it definitely wasn't the regular engineers we're used to whether it be hardware or software, ..... but a toy it is not......24bit/16bit samples, reads thumb drives, 2 sd card slots, allot of ram for a hardware sampler,

[convex]

.