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The "game" part of things is fairly simple: symbols that correspond to the face buttons glide in on time (well, relatively, but more on that in a second) toward one of three landing points. Simply tapping in time with the correct button will help build up a combo meter on the right side of the screen, and by hitting special glowing symbols, you can build up an Overdrive Meter that lets you double your combo meter"s multiplier for a short time. 
The catch is that while in Overdrive, the symbols will slide in from the diagonals instead of arriving straight on from the left, right and top of the screen. Because you have to hold left or right on the d-pad to capture the symbols hitting those landing points, it can cause some fairly hectic button mashing segments, so there"s a very basic risk/reward setup to going into Overdrive. Otherwise, it"s simply a matter of juggling symbols as they come in, which is an easy to understand concept that requires no real tutorial (though there is one for those that are stumped). 
What does require a tutorial is the other half of Beats" offering: a light music creation tool that uses the dozen tracks from SCEE titles like Team Buddies, EyeToy Kinetic and Drop Ship (plus a few tracks made just for Beats) to break apart the components into a custom mix. It"s slightly similar to the remixing tool that was found in FreQuency, and if you spend the time becoming familiar with the various parts of a song (they"re broken down into banks for synth, drums, percussion, vocals and so on), you can actually accomplish some rather interesting remixes.