Was expecting a basic sequencer with a decent soundset. To my happy surprise it's much more than that!
It has a very good sequencer built into it and it comes with one thing that I miss from most of the music applications that gets used by me is to have the option to enter the notes exactly where you want to... This is something that I do miss from programming music into a sequencer in a DAW for P.C / MAC as you can get just the right groove / feeling / swing
in this way.
(Developers please...)
It is comfortable to work with and you have a very handy magnifying glass popping up if you keep your finger pressed to the screen making it real easy to program the notes on a small screen. It is also possible to use a piano keyboard to enter the notes.
It does have a lovely sound so just as a sampler instrument it is worth the price.
Just about everything oozes quality and a some serious planning / programming even of the help function is something that would be excellent to see more often as I have not seen it implemented in any other Android application.
It comes with the possibilities to share your compositions over Twitter / Facebook / Email where you can allow editing if other people have the application and a nice addition is the music box player that gets shown playing the music where it can auto play or you have to crank the shaft yourself.
Right.
And that would have been the end of this review-
A great sequencer for making music box music...
No it is cooler than that!
It is actually made for creating your own paper strips to load into real music boxes that uses thicker paper instead of metal cylinders. So this is the purpose and this is what makes it perfect as it is made for a specific task.
There is different places where you can order / buy these type of music boxes and they come in different sizes 12 / 15 / or 30 notes and usually if I understand is that they normally come with a small paper puncher to easily punch the holes in the paper.
They recommend a place selling nice toys called Grand Illusion that sell all of the sizes and already made paper strips... But as the application is made for printing out the strips yourself as JPG ( or to export as Wav or as the music box player with hand crank ) with included instructions of what sort of paper is most suitable it is not at all necessary.
Think to buy a small music box is great idea as a mechanical sequencer playing your music in the physical world is brilliant!
And what a gift for anyone interested in music as the boxes are not too expensive a 12 note one is around 20 euros / 30 $.
If you could export midi you could do just as I said in the beginning of the review use it also to make your own sequences with your own "imperfect" groove and import to applications that allows Midi import. It also do not allow you to set the BPM and you can only set the speed as -4.0 and in decimal increment up to +4.0 and guess it is possible to figure out what numbers corresponds to what BPM but it does make it easier if you could just set the BPM...
Luckily enough the developer said that he will implement both Midi import and later export ( Which also means that you can take sequences from Caustic or SunVox or any application that allows Midi export and get the Music Box to play / print those compositions ).
Soon also Bpm...
So support this developer by buying this extremely expensive application costing as much as half a beer in a bar!
This will make him excited and implement these last features making a great application greater.
Playstore link-
Music Box Composer
One of the places to order a mechanical music box-
Grand Illusion