Review: MobileMix music making app for iPhone

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
There have been many music making and recording apps made for the iPhone, and since that ground has been covered, many developers are starting to create more specific pieces of software that specialise in certain musical areas. MobileMix ($3.99, App Store) is such an app, and focuses on creating tracks from overlaying loops of recordings.



For instance, you could have one track where you hum a nice bassline, and then create another where you have something more melodic, and then perhaps another to create a nice chorus. Add a few more tracks and something that sounds like a song begins to emerge.



The interface for recording the loops is fairly svelte, allowing you to easily create a new track or listen to a previous one with a quick tap. Recording counts you in, and is fairly straight-forward from there - and though the sample quality is a little low, once enough loops are laid over each other it becomes hard to tell.



However, recording is where MobileMix's most serious flaw becomes apparent - and that is that you cannot hear the tracks that have been recorded already. This means that unless you have a very good sense of timing, it is extremely difficult to synchronise the samples that you've made into one coherent whole. It makes the whole app, as nice as it is, very hard to actually make anything with - and while the app store description says that MobileMix can "assist you by clamping each track", try as I might, I could not find anything even remotely resembling assistance.



But in case you do have good natural rhythm, there's a little more fun to be had on the main screen, where you're presented with all your different recordings as CD jewel cases. The fun thing about this menu is that you can set different photographs from your own library as the album artwork, and can also set whether the song is clean or explicit - resulting in the appropriate label on the case.



Sharing these recordings to a computer is done via the old Bonjour networking trick, which has the iPhone join your Bonjour network and create a tiny website to download the files off - maybe one of the best systems for sharing files from the iPhone if you have a Mac (or can be bothered to install Bonjour on your PC).



If this app fixed its one glaring problem - having all tracks recorded in a musical vacuum - this could be really good. However, as it stands, the introductory price of $3.99 is a little steep for an app that is so hard to make anything with.



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