Have you ever been listening to songs on your mobile and wished that you could remix them to make them better? Have you simply wanted to release the inner DJ inside you and share your music with your friends? Then this new piece of software from Lower Mars is something you should check out. The application is called myRMX offers new levels of interaction in terms of gaming by using music. The application itself is offered for free, but you can purchase what they call a mixPACK you get a song from your favorite artist and the ability to remix them for your own tasting. When you are satisfied with the result simply save it as mixTONES or share it with your friends by sending it to them. Your friends can then enjoy your mix or remix it themselves and share it with their own friends.
First impressions
I tend to not read the welcome notes upon install of applications, but myRMX seems to be one of the exceptions. The welcome note have a solid presentation of what the application can do and what the purpose of it is. Very well done and this is something I like to see more of. Then follows the usual boring installation process, nothing to see here, move on.
First contact
Upon start of the application for the first time my ears got more than its brief share of sound from the program. Sound was quite loud and I immediately tried to use the volume keys to turn it down, with no success. It was then that the extensive tutorial saved me from my misery. The tutorial is one of the better ones and covers everything about this application in terms of controls, volume and so on.
myRMX in use
The main screen contains of three choices, load, mix and save. You first have to load a mixPACK to do anything else. You can browse for a mixPACK in two different ways. First one is by pressing the left and right on the D-pad and then center to choose, second one is to press the left softkey and then choose browse mixPACKS. This second way also brings up the option to delete mixPACKS.
Creating your own mix
Now you can either choose to mix song or save it as a ringtone. When choosing to mix you are offered to make a new one or edit an existing one. Choosing a new one, you are prompted to choose between a normal or a long ringtone. Edit mode is the part in which things starts to get tricky. The numeric keypad each has its own sound attached to it and pressing the corresponding buttons toggles the samples on or off in the mix. In this mode you gain absolute control over when each of the sounds should play, whereas the white squares indicates where the particular sample starts.
Pressing the center D-pad, you start to play the mixTONE and the application switches to play mode. Worth noticing is that the volume buttons in this mode are the left and right on the D-pad. To save your remix as a ringtone, you press the right softkey which brings you back to the main screen. The ringtones are stored in your phone memory as .aac files and are very small.
Final thoughts
The application offers quite a lot of options, essentially turning your mobile phone into a virtual mixer board. It offers a variety of advanced mixing features, such as the snapshot and restore options, and a very nice function is that it automatically saves your remixes without you having to do anything.
However, there are still some minor issues such as the loading screen having some overlay issues and the sound control being a bit sluggish not registering keypresses immediately. That said, these minor things are easily forgiven for what this application has to offer overall. One more weird thing is that the buttons on the exit screen seem to switched places, though I suspect that to be intended as exiting the application is very easy by pressing the right softkey twice. Personally, I like the exit screen and the easy user interface. I did find it a bit hard to time the samples right, but I guess that will come naturally with some training. I will watch this one as it immediately brings back memories such as Dance Ejay from the PC and a reminder of xDancer.
How cool is that to have something like that on your phone? Care to share your excitement?
Be sure to check out the video teaser for more enjoying pleasure.
