Mealey says MixPad is partly the result of his initial dissatisfaction with portable music devices. "When I started the company in 1999, I was a music student at San Francisco State, I was looking for something portable and inexpensive to do my composition and songwriting work. Roland had come out with the PMA5 and the interface was terrible, there was no easy way to work with it."

"I looked at all the small portable hardware, took a chance and jumped on the opportunity and started developing software for the Palm platform."

Naturally, handheld MIDI didn't happen overnight. Says Mealey of the early days, "Our flagship product was Notepad, which we've been selling since 2000, everything you compose on there you can export as a MIDI file so you can work on it portably."

"From there we did pattern sequencing, and in the last couple of years we've been doing software synthesis, the handheld devices got powerful enough."

With the advent of devices such as the Treo, musicians find themselves in a wider world of portable MIDI options, handy at both the songwriting stage and in live performances.

"We're tryng to make this as portable as possible, a lot of people go to gigs with laptops these days, but you can buy a handheld at about 100 dollars and it's a huge cost advantage. You always have it on you, and when you're at a restaurant or something and you have an idea, you don't have to grab a napkin anymore, you can pull out your phone or Palm and jot it down. You also will always have your entire MIDI library now!"

Mealey also says the Pro version in development will bring even more to the table. "We're working on a pro version that will let you edit files right on the device and record tracks. There is a long list of features that get into both versions, coming soon is support in the synth for more controllers including pitch bend."

"In the software we want to offer transposing, since its easy to do with MIDI, changing instruments, tempo and etc. during playback. The list goes on and on. The biggest difference will be the ability to record and edit. There will be other special features including being able to see raw MIDI, and some other bonuses."

Like many other innovations as of late, the sheer amount of options can be a problem for beginners. Where to start?

"It's rough on beginners because the hardware is really diverse, from the smart phones, to barebones hand held computers. If you want to connect your handheld to external MIDI software, using your palm to control a sampler, it can get really complicated. Some handhelds support USB but can't be USB hosts, it gets complicated." There may be complicated issues for newcomers, but Chad Mealey says the miniMusic website is dedicated to helping clear up some of the confusion.

"We're trying to improve the explanations on our site in our hardware page. The murkiest part is which handhelds support MIDI out direct to other hardware. Otherwise, just about everything out on the market today runs our synthesizer well."

MixPad is available as a standalone and is also included in the miniMusic Pro Suite, bundled with NotePad, BeatPad, AxisPad, and SoundPad. There is a free demo of MixPad available for download from miniMusic.com.