Publisher Eidos is set to turn the PSP into a virtual music studio following an announcement at this year's Games Developer Conference in San Francisco. The game or software is called 'Traxxpad' will offer virtual sequencers, drum machines, and keyboards that could suit beginners, music lovers, and even professional DJs. Traxxpad will include a mixing and sampling feature so that users can record samples straight to the handheld and remix them on the go, with the ability to export creations as popular music types such as MP3s or WAVs.

The closest thing we have to this right now is the homebrew app PSP Kick v3.00 and development of this application is just starting up again. The question is, will the commercial application live up to the homebrew alternative? In case you're new to the scene, PSPKick has a bit of a following here at QJ. According to Eidos' Kevin Gill - "It's one thing to make a powerful music device, but it is truly impressive to make an application that allows someone unfamiliar with music to make something that sounds professional."

We can't make a judgment on this at the moment because we haven't yet seen anything of this Traxxpad. But sure enough, when screenshots and more details come through, the issue will be raised once more. For their sake, let's just hope Eidos will come up with something a little different, or this game/software will flop very quickly.

We're sure that there's several of you who have been counting the days since the last Soundpack Collection was released for the sample-based drum machine program for the PSP, PSPKick v3.00. In case you haven't, it's been somewhere in the neighborhood of forty. But count no longer! The masters of mobile music making, Noah Vawter and Nathan Wray have been hard at work rounding up the best budding musicians to help expand the audible audacity that PSPKick brings to the PSP, and here's the latest exclusive Soundpack you'll only find here at PSP Updates!

Previous soundpack collections included work from hip-hop producer Diallo, and the multi-genre stylings of artists from DoBox Recordings. That's a tough act to follow, but Noah and Nathan have hit gold with the cool addition of a soundpack collection from Freezepop, headed up by Kasson Crooker. You may be thinking, "who are Freezepop?", but most likely you've heard their work before, and maybe even danced to it.

Kasson Crooker (aka the Duke of Pannekoeken) has been ensconced in making electronic musique for nearly 20 years, with his bands past and present, Freezepop (uber-blip-electropop), Symbion Project (down-tempo/ambient, experimental), and Splashdown (Bjork meets Garbage). The 5 PSPKick kits in Volume 3 come from Freezepop so get ready for electro hits, synth bass, and vocoders, and hopefully many more kits are to follow!

Kasson has worked at Lexicon on such FX processors as the PCM90, MPX-1, and 960, but for the last 8 years he's been in the video game industry. As the audio director at Harmonix Music Systems, he's worked on the PS2 games FreQuency, Amplitude, Karaoke Revolution Volumes 1-4, Eyetoy:AntiGrav, and most recently Guitar Hero. Freezepop has had tracks in all those games as well as Downhill Domination and most recently DDR Ultramix3 for the Xbox. Freezepop tours all over the world and has 4 CD's released and a few 12" records, and Symbion Project has released 2 full length CD's. Both bands are working on their next albums currently, so stay tuned!

Enjoy the PSPKick kits and revel in the fact that you can be sitting on a plane making amazing music. Rokk! Oh and visit www.freezepop.com and www.symbionproject.com for more information on these bands. And of course, if you need help with PSPKick, or just want to share ideas with other musicians, drop by the Official PSPKick Forums here on QJ.NET!

Download: [PSPKick Official Soundpack Collection Vol. 3: Freezepop Attacks!]
Download: [PSPKick v3.00]
Visit: [Official PSPKick Forums]

It's been a little while since we've heard anything from PSPKick, but today they're back and bringing a whole new soundpack collection exclusively to our readers here at PSPUpdates! Last time we heard the hip-hop stylings of Diallo in Volume 1, but now Volume 2 brings you the work of several artists from the The DoBox Crew!

For those of you who are out of the loop and scratching your head, PSPKick v3.00 by Noah Vawter and Nathan Wray turns your PSP into a portable sample-based drum machine. And as these soundpacks demonstrate, the experience provided by this fantastic piece of homebrew is going to keep getting better and better as Nathan and Noah continue enlisting the help of talented musicians, as well as feedback and individual creations from the PSPKick Forums, here at QJ.NET.

DoBox Recordings is a netlabel based in Silicon Valley, California - USA. The artists on the label are very into visual arts, electronics, and video games. What brings them all together is their love for electronic music. Each artist has their own distinct style, and you can expect to hear anything from Techno, Electro, Breaks, IDM and abstract beats. Several of the DoBox artists use PSPKick to work out ideas that will eventually be completed with their normal equipment setups. With all the cool new features in the new version of PSPKick, you can expect to see a release on the netlabel real soon that includes songs made entirely on the PSP, so make sure to keep your ears open for that!

There are two methods of installation. You can either unzip the file straight to the soundpacks folder on your memory card (/psp/game/pspkick3.0/soundpacks) OR you can unzip them on your computer and drag and drop the .pack files and the 'drum' directory to the same place. You will get a dialog box, in either case, that asks if you want to overwrite files. Just say yes.

NOTE: If you have added some of your own sounds, you may want to check to make sure that the sounds in this collection do not have the same name as the ones you have added or your samples will be overwritten with these. Don't worry, installation of this soundpack won't overwrite previous soundpacks!

Download: [PSPKick Soundpack Collection Vol. 2 - The DoBox Crew]
Download: [PSPKick v3.00]
Visit: [Official PSPKick Forums]