Overview

Welcome to SonicMood! SonicMood plays polyphonic sounds with stimulating harmonies, and recorded nature sounds, based on pre-defined Moods. The Moods are designed to have a relaxing or thought-provoking effect on the listener. You can modify or delete Moods, and even create new Moods with your own unique set of instruments, musical scales, timing, and recorded soundfiles. In another window, you can enjoy a slideshow of your favorite photos. SonicMood lets you easily add pictures from your own collection, using "drag & drop."

A Mood comprises the combination of three synthesized MIDI instruments, playing in a “loosely synchronized” fashion, backed by sounds of nature from soundfiles (e.g., recorded nature sounds). Moods can be organized into Themes. The SonicMood window has a list of Moods with the instruments and soundfiles they use on the right, and Themes on the left. Click on a Theme to select it, and double-click on a Mood to start playing it. The “+/-” buttons along the bottom let you add and delete Moods and Themes and the “Edit” button on the toolbar opens the “Edit” window for Mood modification.

SonicMood behaves in a way that’s similar to Apple's iTunes(tm), which should ease the learning curve for new users. So pause and resume play with the space bar, select previous/next Mood with ⌘← or ⌘→, move Mood (master) volume up/down using ⌘↑ or ⌘↓, "Zoom" the main window to a small size by pressing the green "+" button , use the mouse-wheel to change any slider, etc.

This overview will briefly describe SonicMood's main window, its features and controls. After that, quick mention of other items will be made, and you'll be referred to appropriate Help topics for further information. “Help tags” are on by default. Hover over any control or area of interest and you’ll usually be greeted with a yellow Help tag briefly describing its function. If the tags get in your way, just turn them off from SonicMood’s “Help” menu (“Show Help Tags”).

Main Window

This window contains a list of all the Moods and a list of all the Themes. Double-click a Mood in the list to play it. Click on a Theme to select it. Above the lists and to the right of the marquee is a slider that controls the overall volume. To the left of the marquee are controls to pause/play a Mood and go back/forward a Mood. At the bottom are buttons to add/delete a Mood or a Theme, and a search field for finding Moods. The toolbar at the very top (if showing) can be used to open other windows to edit Moods, display photos you’ve added, record Moods, schedule sleep/wake times or to play Moods at a set time of day, to "Mix" volumes, change preferences, and get help. You can add or remove buttons from this toolbar by right/control-clicking on it and selecting “Customize Toolbar...” or selecting the same item from the “Window” menu. See Main Window for more detailed information.

Menus

The MenuBar has menu items to check for updates, register SonicMood, and set Preferences, Open and Save Mood files, set some of SonicMoods controls, set and clear Timers, affect Moods, affect Pictures, affect windows, and provide Help. Contextual menus are available by right/control-clicking in the appropriate areas. Right/control-clicking the Dock icon also brings up a menu.

The "Help" menu displays this Help window and provides an easy way to visit our website. Learn more by selecting the MenuBar Help topic.

Scenic Pictures

The Picture window lets you view images you select while you work and listen to SonicMood. You view the images in a resizable window and use the Picture Timer to change images at intervals you specify. Adding images is easy via "drag-and-drop". You can find out more in the Pictures Help topic.

Timers

You use timers to change Moods and Pictures at regular intervals, to start a Mood at a particular time of day, or to put SonicMood to sleep and wake it up. The Mood, Picture, Sleep, and Wake timers are all accessible from the "Timers" menu. Get the details from the Timers Help topic.

Mood Editing

The majority of the Mood editing capability is found in the “Edit” window. Open that window by highlighting the Mood you wish to edit and clicking the "Edit" button on the toolbar, or selecting "Edit Mood (Info)" (⌘I) from the "Edit" menu. Learn more in the Mood Editing topic.

The last used "Mood file" is loaded automatically when SonicMood starts, and contains the Mood's names, instruments, note timings, the soundfiles, etc. - all the things that define the Moods. You'll find more information in the Moods and Themes Help topic under Saving, Adding, and Creating Mood Files, in the Help topic Mood Editing, and in the MenuBar Help topic under File Menu.

You can add, create, delete, or reset Moods from the SonicMood window by selecting the appropriate item from the Mood menu. You can also delete highlighted Mood(s) or Theme(s) by clicking the “-” button under the corresponding list, right/control-clicking over the highlighted item and selecting “delete” from the popup list, or selecting "Delete" from the Edit menu.

Error Message Window

If SonicMood encounters an error in its code, it will stop and open a "SonicMood Error Reporter" window. An error message will be displayed in the window with some details about the nature of the error and where it occurred. You can enter comments, in the area below the message, about what happened and any buttons you may have pressed, etc., just before the crash. When you're ready, just click the "Send Report & Quit" button to send us the crash report and close SonicMood. The information will help us find and fix that bug so it won't happen again!

Uninstall

To uninstall SonicMood simply drag the "SonicMood.app" file to the trash. After that, go to the "Users/[your user name]/Library/Preferences" folder and drag the “com.BitOfParadiseProducts.SonicMood.plist” file and the “SonicMood” folder to the trash. Finally, go to the “Users/[your user name]/Library/Application Support” folder and drag that “SonicMood” folder to the trash.

Miscellaneous

By default SonicMood limits the position of its windows to within your monitor screen's area. This prevents, for example, a window accidentally being positioned so far off the screen that it is no longer retrievable. Floating windows like "Chimes" and "Colors" are not prevented from being moved outside the limits, but will be positioned within the limits when closed and re-opened (using the “Window” menu). Normal document windows can be dragged outside the limits but will "jump" back immediately to within the limits. If you'd rather not have this behavior, uncheck the "Limit window's position" checkbox on the "Windows" page of the Preferences window.

The color of the dot in the middle of each control slider knob is a measure of the knob setting itself. At its minimum setting, the dot will have a red cast, while at maximum it will obtain a purple hue. Intermediate values range thru shades of yellow, green, and blue. While exploring SonicMood, you'll find that all the slider knobs use this style. We find it more interesting than the plain knobs normally used. Also, all sliders can be adjusted using your mouse's wheel.

Keyboard shortcuts continue to operate as usual except in those few cases where that key (or key combination) has relevance to the current control. For example, while normally the space bar will pause or resume playing the current Mood, if you’re editing some text in a list or edit field a space character will be entered.

SonicMood's instrument rhythms can be changed by a Mood Tempo slider that affects each Mood individually. The slider at the bottom of the "Mixer" window is used to change the tempo. The "Mood Tempo" is the speed or rhythm of the notes. If you like you can think of it as a kind of natural "wind" buffeting which increases with the tempo and makes the sounds vary as if chimes blown by the breeze.

You can close the SonicMood window without quitting. Re-open the window by clicking on its Dock icon (if no other SonicMood-related windows are open) or selecting "SonicMood" from the "Window" menu (⌘1). A Preferences window (⌘,) option allows you to quit on SonicMood window close, if you desire. If you close the window and later quit SonicMood (with the window still closed), the window will remain closed the next time you launch SonicMood. So if you'd rather not have the window open each time you launch SonicMood (you just want the sounds), just close the window before you quit the program.

The "SonicMood" window is completely resizable from small (190 pixels high [+ toolbar height] by 470 pixels wide) to full-screen. The "Picture" window is also completely resizable from 200 pixels high by 280 pixels wide to full screen. When resizing the Picture window, the aspect ratio of the picture is preserved. You can turn this off from the Preferences window or from the Picture's contextual menu. If your computer is at least a 900 MHz G4, then "Show window contents while resizing" is on when you first run SonicMood. When you resize the SonicMood window you'll see the effect immediately. If the resizing operation seems sluggish, you can turn it off from the Preferences window, Window page. Then you'll see an outline of the window during resizing, with the full window jumping to the new size when the mouse button is released.

Cycle through all open "document" windows by pressing "⌘` (grave accent) or ⌘` (grave accent). Note that the Chimes, Colors, and "mini controls" windows are floating and are therefore technically always in the foreground.

You can drag most of the windows around without using the titlebar when "Move by dragging within a window" is on (change it from the Preferences Menu, Windows page). It is on by default.

If you put the mouse cursor over a control, a yellow "help tag" will appear describing its function. Help tags appear over some of the other areas as well. You can disable help tags from the Preferences window, General page or from the Help menu.

All control settings (including SonicMood's "pause" state) and menu selections are saved, and restored the next time you run SonicMood. This includes the Open and Minimized (to the Dock - Window/Minimize) states of most of the "document" windows (e.g. SonicMood, Picture, Audio Record, Edit). Control settings (except the "master" volume slider in the SonicMood window) are saved on a Mood-by-Mood basis. Individual instrument and soundfile volume and pan for each Mood are saved, and can be adjusted from the Edit window.

When you make changes to SonicMood’s controls, you can either save the changes using ⌘S or set a Preferences option to have SonicMood save changes for you after a set delay. To access this option, click the “General” tab on the Preferences window and check or uncheck the “Auto Save Changes” box. When checked, you can specify the delay using the slider below the box. If “Auto Save” is off, SonicMood will ask you if you want to save changes made in a window before the window closes. You can also undo changes you’ve made by using ⌘Z or selecting “Undo” from the “Edit” menu.