Mussila Music School - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Most of it came from app development projects that I worked on with friends after I finished my engineering degree. My friends were in a similar position through our fields differed; we felt unexperienced but also thought that we had a lot of knowledge that could be used towards app development. We sat down together and visioned ideas. There I took the role of the lead programmer, and we worked together in our free time to create interactive stories, puzzles, and card games. We followed it through and released our first product after about one year of development. Today we’ve released multiple products for ourselves and have done other products as contract work.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

Mussila has not been an easy app in development. We’ve had to really dive into broad fields, all from presenting and playing notation on the fly to illustrating and animating an adventurous world full of characters and life. The most challenging aspect of development has probably been the challenge of developing a learning tool that also is a fun game. It’s tricky to walk the thin line between being fun and being informal, and we want Mussila to be both. We want the game to be an adventure, be engaging, be fun, and in the process, the user should be learning everything there is to learn about the first steps in music theory and playing notes on the keyboard.

_{Hilmar Þór Birgisson}

Hilmer is the chief operating officer and co-founder of the award-winning app Musisila.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

Clash Royale is a no brainer for me as I’ve always had a thing for multiplayer games. Jumping into a head to head battle only takes a couple of seconds, and their rapid development of new features always seems to get me back on track when I feel like I’m losing interest.
I’ve been using Yousician to advance my guitar learning with what I feel like a lot of success, though my wife couldn’t agree less. I use Shazam when I want to learn the name of a song or a band that I’m listening to on the radio. I also use it to see the full lyrics of songs and sing with songs karaoke-style, it’s a fantastic feature, and again I think my wife disagrees as my singing skills are far worse than my guitar skills.

How long have you been working on this app?

We started development on this app about 4 years ago. It’s been one crazy journey.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

We want everyone to be able to experience the joy of learning music. To understand the language of written notation, to be able to play a song on the keyboard and experience the joy that comes with it. We see the need for children to get a music teaching tool specially designed for them, and we know the need to make music notation learning fun and engaging.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

Mussila packs learning, adventure, and gaming into a joyful experience for children. When we put it all together, it is where we feel that we are unique.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

We have in our Mussila beta version a live tone detection so that our users can play all of our keyboard exercises without any cords or connections using their own piano or keyboard. We also intend to add more music creation tools, new songs, and more advanced learning courses soon.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

Please contact us about your experience regarding the app through www.mussila.com. We’d like to know how we can improve and what we are already doing well. We want to build up a community of Mussila users where we can all have a discussion about improvements and upcoming features because our main goal is to enable everyone to learn music, and Mussila is an excellent start in that process.