Lay down some killer house tracks with ezmuze. Finally, xbox live delivers a strong music-composition creator
That ezmuze+ isn't a game at all shouldn't hold anyone back from downloading this gem from xbox live's indie gamelist. This is the sort of content that xbox live hasn't delivered at all to date, which is why ezmuze+ is so revolutionary - in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Which is not to say that ezmuze+ is one-eyed, but rather that it offers a dimension that few other downloadables can, the ability to incorporate user-generated content to the max.
If you aren't familiar with music, you'll probably be lost. If you've ever done any recording, however, you should feel pretty much right at home. The screen uses a 4/4 time signature, has boxes for each beat, has up to 10 different tracks (for drums, different electronic sounds, etc) and allows for adjustable volume on each track. Each track has about 50 different possible sound-bytes which allows for a rather infinite montage, while at the same time being similar enough that it'd be hard to make anything sound particularly awful (though if you make bad music, perhaps you need to practice here instead). The beats, rhythms, and sounds are all very interesting and make for some great sounds. Not only that, but you can save your songs, send them to friends via xbox live, etc.
There is, however, a lot of different elements to control outside of the basic sounds - enough to be slightly confusing at first. Thankfully, the game includes a couple of nice tutorials, which walk you through the basics of making your music. In fact, even if you're familiar with these sorts of things, I'd recommend going through the tutorials as they're pretty helpful - if you dive right in you may become lost and frustrated, as the complexity will be difficult at first. Once through, however, you'll be in the wide-open west of music creation. Since all the sounds are of the same genre, you should pretty quickly start churning out some darn fine music.
Aside from the controls which aren't really intuitive, the other place that could use improvement is in music flexibility. Instead of limiting the number of tracks, it'd be great to be able to have 5 "lead" tracks or 5 "drum" tracks etc. Also, when you copy and paste sections of music, the volume designation doesn't move too, requiring you to set volume levels repeatedly for every track which is annoying.
Bottom Line: If you like creating music, enjoy trans/house, or are just the creative type looking for a new outlet, ezmuze+ Hamst3r edition is an excellent choice for your time and money. It's absolutely the best music-generating game for the xbox, and a worthy addition to any artists's palette.