News of Tao-Group's music creation utility for Smartphone, SSEYO miniMIXA, first came to our attention back in August and since then we at MSMobileNews have been privileged enough to have exclusive evaluation copies of the software. So it�’s with these four months of experience that we endeavour to bring you the ultimate guide to SSEYO miniMIXAÂ…

Now at this point some of you may be thinking to yourself, “that�’s all well and good but what the hell is miniMIXA?” Well, in short, SSEYO miniMIXA is

“the most innovative, powerful and feature-packed mobile music creativity application you can lay your hands on. It has DJ mixing, sequencing, synthesis, visualisation & recording studio capability all rolled into one. It is so good, it has even won a nomination for a BAFTA!”

Sounds pretty impressive right? Well read on to find out moreÂ…

When you start the application you are confronted with a splash screen which then takes you to the menu. The menu gives you options to perform a variety of tasks which you can see in the screenshot.

We�’ll start with creating a new audio ringtone. Upon clicking this, you are taken to a sub menu which allows you to select a “mixa pak”. The standard installation comes with the MIXA1 pak and has enough sounds and effects to keep amused for hours. However, after a while, you may want to invest in some more which are available from the Sseyo site. So after selecting the mixa pak you want to use (unfortunately you can only use one at a time), its time to get creative. As you can see from the screenshots, miniMIXA has a classic “pick a block, pick a sound” style interface seen on many music creation apps. Unlike other apps of this genre however, you can only control what you see. The four by five block grid is where it starts and where it ends. The player constantly plays through the grid and then repeats, so anything you create is pretty much done “on-the-fly” and a good knowledge of all the various sounds and effects is pretty essential. Now that may sound like a big down side but in all honestly, the live music making style is kind of growing on me. I�’ve found myself on many an occasion just sitting down to have a play with miniMIXA and before I know it I�’ve made a ten minute long song that actually sounds quite good. For each row of blocks you can control the volume, effect applied and be able to isolate the row totally, allowing you to, for instance, leave a bass track looping while you change the lead or drum track and then, when the time is right, bring the other tracks in for some pretty cool effects. Similarly you can isolate a column for some cool looping effects while you decide what to put in the rest of your track or, if can get the timing right, just add/remove/change the sounds/effects as you are going along for a kind of live jam session. The main interface also allows you trigger the play of rows at different times, change the equalizer settings, record your track and even show visualisations! Something which even the best media players on Smartphone fail to achieve.

 

There plenty of nice little features and touches incorporated into this app that make mixing your own track a breeze from the easy to follow built-in help guide that tells you all the main things you�’ll need to know, to the handy button highlight which tells what a button is in the display window. One of the best features however, is the ability to play Koan format generative music. Koan is a format of music which constantly changes while it plays. You could, for instance, have a synth track playing in the background and it would continue to change, so you never hear they same track twice, giving you some really nice effects.

SSEYO miniMIXA is dream to use, making mobile mixing easy and fun. The level features and usability is truly amazing and the quality of music produced is comparable to that of some PC based software, which in itself is awesome, especially when you consider the platform its designed for. Making music needn�’t be a chore and with SSEYO miniMIXA it isn�’t. This software just oozes quality and is a great buy whether you�’re a serious music producer who just wants to keep track of new ideas, a bedroom dj who wants to have a play every now and again or an average type of person who just wants to make unique ringtones. Plus there is always the show-off factor of being able to make music on your phone ;)

This app is great and I highly recommend you try it out and see for yourself.

For more info and downloads go here

It is actually possible, using the MIXpak cell (top row, 5th cell), to select another MIXApak and add content to the mix from this pak, thereby creating a mix containing content from multiple packs. When you add in content from another pak it is pitch-shifted/time-stretched to fit the settings of the mix. In addition, the list displayed from that cell also allows you to change the tempo and pitch of the mix (this is in itself wicked fun)!!

Thanks for the tip Tim!

nedge2k

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