No Man's Sky Now Lets Players Make Music And It's Wild

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No Man’s Sky players have been using the newly added ByteBeat machine to make their own tunes, some of which truly whip ass. Who knew what No Man’s Sky needed to get people’s creative juices flowing was a sophisticated synthesizer?

The ByteBeat machine is a fun little holiday present from Hello Games to No Man’s Sky players. It allows players to make procedurally generated music, and for the more musically inclined, it works as a pretty robust synthesizer similar to a program like Fruity Loops. I haven’t had a ton of time to play with it, in part because I’ve been jamming to the sweet tunes No Man’s Sky players have been making with it.

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Some players have made dance clubs:

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Others are just noodling around with loops and arpeggiators:

The things you can do with the built-in arpeggiator are really impressive to me. Here’s No Man’s Sky player Kibbles using the ByteBeat machine to cover the DJ Sammy version of “Heaven.” I promise if you don’t think you know this one, you do.

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Kibbles has also covered “My Boo” by Ghost Town DJs, which is one of my favorite songs of all time. Please give this player’s work a listen; it’s seriously impressive.

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What I love most about ByteBeat is that it’s both a fun toy and a real music-making tool. Musician Noam Bergman has created a full four-minute song using the ByteBeat machine, saying in the description that it was a “collaborative effort” between himself and ByteBeat. He’s also got a SoundCloud link for y’all to check out.

The ByteBeat machine seems like an extremely user-friendly way to understand how electronic music is made, and to start making it yourself. Given how much of No Man’s Sky is directed by the player community, it makes total sense that players have latched onto this little device in the way they have. I’ll get around to checking it out myself eventually, but as for now, I could use a nap. Let me just throw this on: