Spatial Mixer: Cross-Device Interaction for Music Mixing

When workspaces for commercial music production are digitized they are generally configured based on existing analogue music production environments, using the "channel strip" metaphor to organize the multiplicity of devices involved in the process. The channel strip metaphor is derived from the traditional design of mixing consoles with parallel sliders acting as separate channels. An alternative to this is the "stage" metaphor, which visually represents sound elements as discrete actors on a stage for manipulating settings. To study cross-device interactions in music mixing, we designed the Spatial Mixer, an app that uses the stage metaphor, to work in concert with Ableton Live, an existing music composition program. A study of Spatial Mixer in use showed that the stage metaphor and spatial visualizations of music tracks and effects was intuitive for users to interact with and helped them work across both pieces of software to effectively create their musical composition.