Zero X's 'BeatSlicer'

For any of us who use loops to make music in any form, be it electronica, dance or Russian influenced ska, timings a common problem. Beats are too slow, too fast, not arranged quite how we want them, etc. Simply stretching parts to with wont always cut it as signal quality degrades and your cool-as-fudge drum loop becomes a stodgy mix not worth the disc space its using.

Solutions? Put up, compromise your artistic vision or find another loop.

It needn't be this way though, as I found whilst researching a project in which i was trying to make one hit samples out of some old sixties drum loops. Frustrating and boring.

Enter BeatSlicer!

Zero X's BeatSlicer takes the trouble out of time changes and the aggravation out of alterations. It does, essentially, exactly what it says on the tin...slices beats. Or as developer Peter Segerdahl describes it "A major software with all sorts of tools for easy manipulating rhythmic loops/grooves" It does so, however, in a way which has changed the way that I use samples in my music. Indeed, Peter uses it to make his own music which you can find at http://surf.to/novelty/.

So, let's check it out in more detail...

Firstly, BeatSlicer can be used as a stand alone application with which you can open up from your start menu and tinker with at will, or, even cooler, as a tool within FL Studio (formerly known as FruityLoops), allowing you to copy parts back and forwards between the apps. Simply go to FL Studio's 'import' then 'import beat to slice' option in the file menu, and voila, you're ready to BeatSlice! Lastly, BeatSlicer also easily communicates with FL Studio's Fruity Slicer plugin, making a seamless integration between the two applications.

Upon opening BeatSlicer you're presented with an image representing the beats of the loop. Its big, its clear, and you can't miss it - perfect for the fine tuning and fiddling that us musicians love to do. Above that, is the toolbars, which we'll come to later. But first, back to that beat.

By the time you can see the beat, BeatSlicer will already have split it into slices where the peaks in sound occur and figured out the BPM of the loop, to three decimal places. If you feel its not split the beat down far enough, you can adjust its sensitivity so it pick up more subtle beats, or slice by hand to suit your needs. However, having used BeatSlicer for almost a year now on a regular basis I've never had to do this - unless I've been making something weird and wanted to intentionally confuse it. But hey, it copes with that too.

You will now be able to click on, and edit a single segment; move them around, delete or repeat and shuffle to your heart's content. The basics are as simple as they sound. To delete a part, select and press delete…gone. To copy, select copy, then paste, just like any other copy and paste function youd use anywhere else on your windows machine. Want to move a piece? Click and drag baby! As simple as that.

But BeatSlicers talents aren't limited to simply moving parts around...the 'Process' menu allows normalization of either single beats, or the loop as a whole to a set level ( 0 db by default, but whatever you choose), and has options to silence, fade in or fade out again either a single slice or the whole loop.

The three toolbars show, from bottom to top, information about the beat and sensitivity settings, zoom and fit to screen settings and standard save/load settings on the top, as well as the play, stop fast forward bits. Well laid out, intuitive and hassle free, keeping in with the spirit of the app. It does everything easily, smoothly and well, without having to spend months poring over the manual.

Once youre happy with your loop, you can export .wavs of the individual parts on their own, slice markers (so you can insert different samples into the same groove, in FL Studio, for example), or both. Exporting both will allow you to open the beat as is in another compatible app and incorporate into your creations as you see fit.

Just as Apple's GarageBand has been praised for its ease of use and lack of pretension, thus leaving you free to concentrate on the music, so does BeatSlicer. It's a tool, not especially complex in itself, but versatile and hassle free. It's available through www.flstudio.com/beatslicer for the very reasonable $35. Thoroughly recommended!

BeatSlicer's Big Brothers

BeatSlicer is not alone in the Zero X's world of beat generation and manipulation. There are two other very cool tools available that this review would be incomplete without mentioning.

BeatCreator is just as it sound...a beat slicing, mangling and creating tool. It can slice up beats from any sample (a large number of formats are supported for importing and exporting) and reassemble them to create your own loop, stretch it, crunch it and morph it to you liking.

BeatQuantizer can do everything BeatCreator can do, plus further capabilities, one of the best time stretchers around, plus tools to automatically mask the gaps, overlays and other anamolies sometimes created by DAW loop processing.