Blogging to Paradise

We’re making great progress on the next update to SonicMood! Most of the new features are in and debugged. There are still one or two new features we’re thinking of adding. After that it’ll be beta time, followed shortly by its release.:) Here’s a partial list of changes so far:Â

1. Combined all the edit controls that worked on individual instruments into one page called “Individual Note Properties.” That and a few other changes in the “Mood Info/Edit” window should make editing Moods easier.
2. Changed the timing and volume variation controls to work on each instrument individually.
3. Each instrument can set its own # of notes now, although the maximum number of notes playing at any time is still 16.
4. Changed the method of setting pause and sustain times from directly specifying a time in seconds to setting a “tempo” (in Beats Per Minute) and a note value (quarter note, eighth note, etc.)
5. Changed the “Mood Tempo” slider into a “Relative Tempo (%)” slider on the SonicMood window to be compatible with the idea of “tempo” and note values (quarter note, etc.)
6. Enabled the use of the mousewheel to adjust all sliders (volume, pan, etc.) and the time/date digits in the sleep/wake/TimeOfDay windows.
7. Tweaked the MIDI note generation to work more reliably with new features like the ability to adjust the number of notes for each instrument individually.
8. The “Instrument Groups” (pianos, strings, etc.) are saved and restored now.
9. Updated some of the Mood instrumental settings to make them more pleasing.
10. Moved the synthisizer list to the preferences window.
11. Made cosmetic changes to the “default” color scheme to make it more “mainstream”.
12. Changed the slider knobs to round and tweaked the location of slider elements a little to give more space.
13. Added background color to the “Mood Info/Edit” window. Fixed the text so its color would contrast properly with the background color.
14. Saved a little space at the top of the SonicMood window and now the “zoomed” height is 60, not 65.
15. Fixed a bug with the “Clear All” and “Restore” buttons/functions on the Keyboard Window. They weren’t working.
16. Fixed a bug the was causing fast notes to sometimes not continue after a few seconds.
17. Fixed a bug that kept buttons from darkening when pressed.

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It shouldn’t be too long now. We’ve got v4.8.6 in beta and so far we’ve received no reports of bugs. If all goes well, this version will go “gold” in a week or less.Don’t forget, those of you who haven’t purchased SonicMood yet, if you buy before v4.8.6 comes out you’ll get “free updates forever”. If you wait until after v4.8.6 is out you’ll need to pay a small upgrade fee after every two major version releases.Lots of good stuff coming, so don’t wait!John

Well, we haven’t seen much in the way of bug reports (or bugs) in v4.8.5.3 so the next version will probably be v4.8.6. As you may know from the “IMPORTANT MESSAGES” notes on our web site, anyone registering after v4.8.6 comes out will no longer have “free upgrades for life”. Instead you will have to pay a reasonable “upgrade fee” after two major versions. So if you register with v4.8.6 you’ll need to pay the fee when v6.8.6 comes out, which probably wouldn’t be for a few years.So far I’ve managed to make two major improvements to v4.8.6. One is a re-factoring of the timers that drive the notes and many other time-dependent operations. This will make for a much cleaner and easier to maintain and extend set of routines. The other is the rethinking and rearranging of the way we handle Scene files and Soundfiles. Scene files and Soundfiles will now be kept in separate folders inside a folder labeled “SonicMood” inside the “Application Support” folder. This will make for a centralized repository for those files which will make it easier to keep track of them. It will no longer be necessary to specify a location for the Soundfiles folder, either.There are a few more improvements:

1. Holding the “shift” key down while sliding the instruments or soundfiles volume slider will set the volume of all the Moods, not just the one currently playing.
2. The “Scene list” is now on a sheet window attached to the “Scene” window.
3. Put the current elapsed timer mode in the “progress bar timer area” of the marquee.
4. Improved the behavior of the elapsed timer so it won’t start up if the current Theme contains no Moods.

More to follow!☺

Well, we got v4.8.5 out, then rushed out v4.8.5.1 to fix some rather annoying bugs. Now we’re working hard on another bug fix version (v4.8.5.2) that’ll squish even more bugs we’ve found!We’ve also made a new page on the web site (“Sharing”) at http://www.sonicmood.com/MoodSharing.htm that contains extra soundfiles and some Mood files users have contributed. Stop by and pick up some new Moods if you’d like.Well, it’s May already and the yard’s a mess. We are threatening to go out and start a cleanup (to be fair, Laura did a bit yesterday while I was pounding the keyboard). So it’s time to GTD (Get Things Done!) :)Hope you all have a great weekend!John