SonicMood, Perfect for When You Get Bored of Your Music

Most of us these days listen to music while working on our computers, until it becomes a habit that is hard to break.

Most of the time everything is peachy, until you have one of those days when you don't feel like any of your music and want to listen to something different, similar to how people sometimes turn to radio when bored of their own musical selection.

If you can listen to Internet radio, then that might be the ticket for you, but for those who can't, but still feel the need for some sound in the background as they work, there is often nothing for it.

I've had a look at several 'sound generating' programs before, which turned out to be utter duds. After trying one that pretended to generate 'silence' but instead generated the most atrocious radios static, and several 'ocean wave' generators that produced static with a sort of rhythm to it, I gave up on such programs considering them to be a waste of bandwidth and disk space. However, SonicMood forced me to rethink my position.

What it does
Simply put, SonicMood generates ambient mood sounds. Initially I was expecting to hear more static, however I was pleasantly surprised to hear actual instruments, not some static pretending to be something else.

It is akin to a digital wind chime, that does not actually generate a tune or any kind, but rather pseudo random sounds that are in harmony with each other. And these are polyphonic sounds we are talking about here, so they sound pretty damn good for something that is being thrown together on the fly.

Moods
SonicMood works with 'mood files', which are in essence a collection of instruments and a lot of numbers that are needed in the algorithm that generates the actual sound you hear.

The content of these mood file themselves is visible and editable, however, you need a pretty good idea of instruments and sounds and notes to actually have a clue about what all those options mean. Fortunately, you don't need to know how and what is happening inside the program to be able to take advantage of it.

The mood files themselves are pretty well named and grouped, and the instruments sound good with each other. After listening to all of them for a few minutes I can't say I found any that didn't sound good… they all sound pretty damned good. However, as their name applies, they are quite mood orientated and themes such as melancholy really don't cut it when you are working and energetic.

Regardless of which of the moods you what to listen to, you can enjoy it pretty much until the end of your life, because it is generated and never repeating. Not even after a little over an hour now have I noticed any kind of repetition.

Mood swings
Because a mood file can be played infinitely, the program has a special timer option for letting you change from one mood file to the other, after a certain amount of time has elapsed.

This can take on several forms, with the moods being either shuffled, played sequentially, or having only the currently selected moods playing. This option is pretty moot as there is no actual way to predict what you will want to listen to an hour from now, and the mood files in the same theme are, although clearly different, similar enough not to offer a major change.

Still, if you do want to mess around with this, be prepared for a pretty strange and unintuitive experience. The documentation helps, but it is written in the same style as the design of the program and it is overly easy to lose yourself in it.

Visualizations
This is perhaps the most dubious aspect of the program. It offers two built in visualizations: chimes and scene.

The chimes themselves are a 3D looking pixilated representation of real life wind chimes. However, they move in a very broken up and robotic manner, which is hard on the eye and clashes with the actual harmony of the sounds heard.

The scenes are a totally different matter entirely. They are images of pretty serene places that actually are very much in tune with the mood of the program. The first issue with these is that they are semi transparent, showing off a little of what is behind them, but not enough to see anything clearly. The second issue is that the program then takes these serene images, and dumps rainbow colored music notes all over them, the result being distinctively kitsch.

The Good
Ear pleasing generation of sounds that actually fit the mood used to describe them. Good sound quality and lack of repetition in the generation process.

The Bad
Interface is overly complicated and unintuitive if you want to do more than just select the mood file and click play. The visualizations are horrible.

The Truth
One of the best sound generators out there. It actually sounds good.

Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge: